ACUTE CONGESTION OF THE KIDNEYS IN SWINE.
Causes: infection, toxins, fermented food, traumas, crowding, cold. Symptoms: stiff loins and quarters, frequent micturition, urine limpid or red. Treatment.
Renal congestion in pigs has been seen mainly as the result of toxin poisoning in swine erysipelas, hog cholera or caseous pneumonia. It is also liable to occur from putrid or overfermented food, and in fat, heavy animals from injuries sustained in shipping by rail by trampling on or squeezing each other. Kicks and other injuries may at times contribute to its occurrence. Exposure to cold storms, to which swine are especially sensitive, a wet, cold bed, or a leaky roof, are additional causes.
The symptoms are more or less stiffness of the loins and hind parts, frequent urination, the secretion being often passed in excess, and though at times clear yet at others pink or bloody and precipitating blood clots or at least containing blood globules.
Treatment is mainly prophylactic. If therapeutic measures are desirable for valuable animals, they should follow the same lines as for sheep: rest, fomentations, aqueous food, anodynes, weak alkaline diuretics, laxatives, and balsams.