126 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



communicate to him the points upon which they desire in- 

 formation. 



Mr. T. S. Gold, Secretary of the Connecticut State Board 

 of Agriculture. Allow me to take exception to your state- 

 ment, Mr. Chaii-man, that there is not anybody here who 

 knows anything about this subject. I do not profess to be 

 able to give the cause or the remedy for it, but I think I 

 know something about it from personal experience on my 

 own farm. I do know some facts that perhaps may be in- 

 teresting, and if you will allow me three or five minutes to 

 state some of them, I will do so. 



I knew a case in eastern Connecticut, upon one of the best 

 stock forms, where a cow aborted in a distant stable on the 

 farm. She was brought into the home barn and placed there 

 by the side of other pregnant cows. Abortion of the adjoin- 

 ing cow soon followed, and it spread in that stable until per- 

 haps fifty per cent, of the pregnant cows aborted. 



A cow from New York State was placed in Fairfield 

 County for pasturage during the summer. There was some 

 abortion on that form. She was served by a bull on that 

 farm, and in the autumn she was taken back to New York, 

 and during that period of pregnancy when they were most 

 likely to abort, and when the cattle on the farm where she 

 had been kept during the summer aborted, this cow also 

 aborted in her New York quarters. 



Some years ago it was very prevalent to the west of us 

 along the line of the Harlem road, over the mountains sep- 

 arating that section from the portion of Litchfield County in 

 which I reside. I have had fifty calves a year for forty 

 years, and with a single exception of a brief period, to which 

 I will allude, I have not lost five calves in that forty years ; 

 but there was a neighborhood in our town of small dairies 

 where abortion was prevailing. My neighbor pastured his 

 young stock there and they began to abort. He brought 

 them home and abortion spread through his herd. His farm 

 adjoins mine at a distance of half a mile, only separated by 

 a fence ; but the herds never got together. One-half of his 

 herd aborted that year. The next July my cows began to 

 abort. The first animals were taken, thoroughly disinfected, 

 turned away from the dairy, shut up by themselves, and fat- 



