Swine Groiuers' Association. 315 



ready for supplying serum died from Septicaemia (blood poison- 

 ing), due to the contamination of the virus used for hyperimmu- 

 nizing them. Hence, the necessity for careful bacteriological work 

 to prevent such accidents. If, with the care we try to give this 

 matter, some mistakes are made, what may not happen in the 

 hands of empirics whose ideas of immunity are crude, and whose 

 technic is faulty? 



While the serum as at present produced has, in the great ma- 

 jority of cases, given excellent results, we hope to still further 

 improve the methods of production and increase the potency of 

 the serum in order to cheapen the cost, increase the quantity and 

 lessen the dosage. In the work of the past year we have learned 

 how to produce a larger quantity than formerly, and even if the 

 horse and ox should not prove of practical value as producers of 

 hog cholera serum, the hog will still remain of sufficient practical 

 value as a producer of the serum to continue in service, despite the 

 disadvantages of the smaller quantities of serum supplied. An 

 animal that will supply every week or ten days from 90 to 100 

 doses of serum is worth his care and feed, and while the expense 

 of producing the serum by this method renders it unattractive to 

 the commercial vaccine producers, its use by the State in an of- 

 ficial way for the suppression of outbreaks, which would other- 

 wise become general and cause great loss, makes it cheap, since the 

 cost is distributed among the many who are benefited through the 

 suppression of the disease early in the outbreak, in neighboring 

 herds. 



On account of the comparatively limited quantity of serum 

 which we have up to the present produced, it has necessarily been 

 used mainly to demonstrate its value under varied conditions, in 

 as many parts of the State as possible, for purely experimental and 

 educational purposes, and not in a systematic way to completely 

 eradicate the disease in any badly infected district. Under the 

 present conditions we have deemed it wise, in using the serum, to 

 give preference to certain classes of swine over other classes, just 

 as the farmer would do if he were the owner of the several classes ; 

 that is, we have given preference first to the "registered" breeding 

 herds that were suffering from the disease; then to the breeding 

 stuff of the common herds, the sows and boars that are to be re- 

 tained on the farms; next the young immature swine that are 

 unfit for market ; and last the hogs in the "feed lot." In an emer- 

 gency, the last mentioned class can be put on the market and some 

 profit realized, while in the other classes the sacrifice would be 



