304 Missowi Agricultural Report. 



siderable extent the need of the thorough disinfection of the stock 

 cars. 



The cars in which swine are shipped should, under present 

 conditions, be thoroughly cleaned and disinfected before they are 

 returned to the country districts — they are otherwise a means of 

 spreading the infection, through the litter that falls from the cars 

 en route, or is thrown out at the end station. 



The tagging of cars that are known to contain infected hogs 

 should be required, to call attention to the necessity for thorough 

 disinfection, before other hogs are shipped in same car. 



This is probably sufficient to say in regard to the ordinary 

 methods which should be applied in the control of hog cholera. 

 Let us give the remainder of the time at our disposal to a consid- 

 eration of protective inoculation by means of the "immunizing hog 

 cholera serum." 



THE USE OF THE "IMMUNIZING SERUM" AS A MEANS OF CONTROL- 

 LING HOG CHOLERA. 



In the earlier part of this address, I expressed the opinion 

 that the "hog cholera serum" will come into large use as an im- 

 portant aid in controlling hog cholera. This opinion is based up- 

 on the success which the serum has given when tested in a practical 

 way, on a large number of farms, in various parts of the State; 

 as well as upon the increasing demands for the serum wherever it 

 has been used. In one month there were calls for ten thousand 

 doses of the serum from Missouri farmers — calls for aid have 

 come from sixty-nine counties during the past six months. Nor 

 has the interest been confined to our own State; as calls for the 

 "serum" have come from twenty-four other states. Only in a 

 few exceptional cases mentioned elsewhere havfc we giveu aid to 

 parties outside of the State; and much to our regret, we have 

 at times been unable to give prompt aid to a considerable number 

 of farmers in our own State. But even with the limited facilities 

 which we at present have at the Experiment Station for producing 

 the "serum," we have been able to demonstrate its value in thirty 

 counties; and at the time of going to press, we have inoculated 

 over six thousand hogs. This work, with only two excep- 

 tions, has been done on infected farms, and in herds where some 

 of the hogs were sick and dying from cholera at the time the herd 

 was treated. Complete reports from all these herds have not 

 been received, but those at hand indicate that the losses have not 

 been greater than 5^ of the apparently healthy hogs that were in- 



