124 AGRICULTURE OF MAINE. 



regions to visit cattle in Maine. It undoubtedly will occur before 

 a great while that Massachusetts men who have lost cattle, or 

 Rhode Island men who have lost cattle, will be coming this way 

 to look up fresh cattle with which to supply their herds. I 

 should consider it very unwise to let those men go into your 

 stables, for a while at least, until we know that the disease is 

 becoming less. At any rate, you should take the greatest pre- 

 caution with these men, if they do come, and see that they have 

 nothing on their persons that they have worn in the stables of 

 infected districts. They should have absolutely clean clothes, 

 clean shoes, clean hands. Otherwise you will never keep the 

 disease from your State. When it has once arrived in the State, 

 which I sincerely hope will not happen, then comes another 

 question. Everything then must be quarantined in the strictest 

 possible manner. All the products of the farm should be quar- 

 antined, all communication between infected districts and other 

 districts, or infected farms and other farms, should be most care- 

 fully guarded against. No man taking care of sick cattle should 

 ever go to a neighbor's place, in fact, he should never go on the 

 street without changing all the clothes that he has had on when 

 in the vicinity of these diseased cattle. All traffic with cattle 

 has to be suspended, all marketing, public or private. No sales 

 can be allowed. It is for these reasons that the disease is so 

 much dreaded in a community. It means so much finan- 

 cial loss to almost everybody connected with agriculture or dairy- 

 ing or farming in every possible way. Just see in the daily 

 papers what the steamship companies lose by not being able to 

 transport our cattle to England ! I cannot beg you to be too 

 careful with these regulations. It may seem foolish, but I assure 

 you that it is not, if you wish to keep the disease out, and you 

 certainly do. You must be exceedingly careful, also, in feeding 

 and using the milk of diseased animals. Do not use the milk 

 or feed it to animals upon the farm unless it is first thoroughly 

 boiled. One of our Massachusetts farmers, the other day, was 

 told very carefully not to feed the milk from these diseased 

 cattle to his pigs because the disease was very contagious and 

 these animals would get it also. He was a most conscientious 

 man and obeyed these rules to the letter. He boiled the milk 

 before he gave it to the pigs and the pigs did not become dis- 

 eased, but he did not boil the milk before giving it to his calf. 



