STATE DAIRY ASSOCIATION. 321 



Let me give you an incident in my own state of Minnesota. My 

 father was a wheat farmer in the southern part of that state when I 

 was a boy, and as a result we had chinch bugs and a depleted soil. A 

 man once met my father and said to him: "Jim^ just as soon as we 

 cannot raise wheat any longer we might as well quit." My father moved 

 to Dakota where he could raise wheat, and then he came to his senses 

 and went into the live stock business. In Steele county, Minnesota, their 

 soil became so depleted and had so many chinch bugs that they could 

 not raise corn successfully, and they were about to starve. There was 

 not a single, farm that was not mortgaged and the farmers did not know 

 which way to turn to get out of that condition, and some way of making 

 a living began to appeal to them. They turned their attention to dairy- 

 ing and now that county raises more cows and supports in her eighteen 

 townships more live creameries and raises more wheat than ever in her 

 history before. In Freeborn county the farmers were so hard up that 

 when a man wanted to borrow money out of the bank, if there was 

 no milk on his shoes the banker would not let him have it, and if he had 

 the milk on his shoes they would let him have all the money he wanted. 



MILK FEVER. 



Some one has asked me about the milk fever treatment. Milk fever 

 has been a dreadful disease among dairymen, and a disease that we have 

 known but little about. We call it milk fever, an improper term. We 

 also call it parturient paralysis, which is an incorrect name. We have 

 no name that gives the true nature of the disease. It is a dreaded disease, 

 destroying the most valuable cows in the herd. We have several treat- 

 ments' for it. Some people give the cow medicine for this disease, a very 

 foolish thing because she is paralyzed and cannot swallow, and the 

 medicine goes to her lungs instead of her stomach. Another treatment 

 is the potassium iodide treatment. They seem to cure a great many 

 animals by injecting a little potassium iodide in warm water. Then there 

 is the oxygen treatment, the pumping of oxygen into each quarter of 

 the udder until it is distended so full that you can see it working through 

 the skin. Finally we became convinced that that was not necessar}\ 

 Then we discovered the fresh air treatment. Every farmer ought to 

 have a bicycle pump fixed with the tubing and on the end of that he 

 can put a small milking tube or goose quill. Put your bicycle pump in 

 boiling water and let it remain there five minutes so as to sterilize it in 

 order that no bacteria may be carried into the udder. With this pump 

 you inflate one quarter of the udder until it is fairly well distended, then 

 the next quarter, and repeat this until all four quarters are fairly well 



