244 agriculture; of MAINE. 



out an appraisal, being a total loss to the owners, on account of 

 the law prohibiting an appraisal upon any animal until it had 

 been owned in the state three years. The record shows that this 

 law has put a check upon diseased animals being shipped into 

 the state for breeding purposes, and in the opinion of the com- 

 missioners has made a decided improvement in this line. 



The records show that before the new law was passed, the 

 commissioners' work was confined practically to grade herds 

 .where only about six per cent were found diseased, practically 

 leaving the pure blood herds uninvestigated, where twenty per 

 cent, have been found diseased by enforcing the new law. Now 

 it would not be fair to claim that the new law is responsible for 

 the total number of one hundred and ninety cattle condemned 

 since its enactment, because there probably would have been 

 some found had it not been for the new law, just how many we 

 cannot tell, but it would be a fair estimate to claim that it has 

 caused the condemning of at least one hundred and thirty that 

 we would not have had to pay for had there been no new law. 

 These cattle cost the state nearly fifty dollars each, which will 

 account for sixty-five hundred dollars ($6500.00) and the esti- 

 mated extra expense wull be at least thirty-five hundred dollars 

 ($3500.00") making a total of ten thousand dollars ($10,000.00) 

 and this will account for so much of the extra amount expended 

 by the commissioners this last year. 



The second section of the new law has brought us in contact 

 with nearly all of the pure blood herds in the state. This pro- 

 vided that all pure blood cattle shall be tested when a sale is 

 made, before delivery. When the law was first put into opera- 

 tion we would send out veterinarians to test just the animal that 

 had been sold and often would be obliged to send veterinarians 

 to the same herd once and often twice in the same month. This 

 we found to be very expensive and we commenced to explain 

 to the owners of the herd whenever they applied to have one or 

 two tested, that we could test the whole herd for nearly the same 

 expense that we could test one for, and advised them to have 

 their whole herd tested, as it would be far less trouble to them, 

 as we could guarantee to them that they could sell at any time 

 up to the time limit of the law, by simply sending to us the cer- 

 tificate of the sale. This rule worked satisfactorily to both the 

 commissioners and the owners and has caused the testing of nine 



