144 AGRICULTURE OF MAIXE. 



on this table, the blood flowing' and perhaps some of the internal 

 organs exposed. What will be the effect? We were not 

 thrown out of the wagon, nothing has touched us, but I will 

 guarantee that there will be men in this audience that will have 

 to get right out of the door because of what the sense of sight 

 conveys to them, the sympathy. If there is a bad odor here 

 many people have to take out their handkerchiefs, and there will 

 be a wrenching of the muscles of the stomach. I have been 

 asked to say something in relation to this subject of abortion. 

 When a cow from an injury, from uterine weakness or any 

 other cause, aborts, if the farmer is negligent about it and leaves 

 that little foetus right there, just remember that the other cows 

 know it just as well as you know it. There is a sympathy that 

 exists between them that has the same effect upon them as upon 

 us. There are epidemics that prevail on farms from neglect^ 

 and are not caused by a germ at all. I have seen and investi- 

 gated these cases until I feel warranted in saying that an epi- 

 demic of abortion will run through a whole herd and not be due 

 to a germ, but to sympathy, by allowing a cow which has aborted 

 aiid the foetus to remain in the herd. What is the lesson? Art 

 accident mav occur, all the medicine in the world never would 

 stop that. But the farmer himself can take that cow right away 

 from the herd and treat her properly, with antiseptics, and the 

 matter will come around all right. Eighty per cent of that seri- 

 ous trouble can be wiped out simply by a little effort on the part 

 of the farmer himself. 



Then, again, how are we going to avoid some of these 

 troubles? I was very much pleased with what the gentleman 

 here said in relation to oats. With some of our very best 

 producing cows, instead of selecting cottonseed meal and some 

 of the more concentrated foods, we shall have to be content with 

 a litLle less milk, and feed those foods which will sustain the 

 vitality of the cow. By feeding our oats and what we can raise 

 on our own farms, and being content with perhaps 500 or 1,000 

 pounds less of milk in a year, we can keep that cow reproducing 

 her kind as she ought to do. 



Here is another little difficulty along the line of breeding. 

 Every year more or less inquiry comes to us in regard to cows 

 that are in a gargety condition. We call it garget, and yet there 

 is a difference. I am treating cows that have been so bred, with 



