198 MISSOURI AGRICULTURAL REPORT, 



number of animals the air in the morning-, after the stable had been 

 closed all night, may be found to be so offensive as to produce nausea, 

 or at least a disturbed uncomfortable feeling. 



SIGNS OF INSUFFICIENT VENTILATION. 



The evidences of an insufficient supply of air passing through the 

 stable to meet the needs of the animals are very unmistakable, once 

 they are understood. A feeling of closeness, the smell of ammonia and 

 of offensive odors, and particularly a dampness of the stable, which 

 results from the condensation of moisture on the ceiling, walls and 

 sometimes on cement floors. Such conditions arc particularly liable to 

 be observed in basement stables, not because the basement is the origi- 

 nator of them, but simply because their walls are usually so much 

 closer than the walls of over-ground stables that the ventilation is less 



perfect unless provision for ventilation is made specially. 



■ \ 



IMPORTANCE OF A CONTINUOUS AND ABUNDANT SUPPLY OF AIR IN STABLES. 



Everyone knows that a complete cutting off of the supply of the 

 air from the system for even a period of a few minutes results in 

 very serious consequences. This is because many of the most vital 

 processes of the body require a continuous and abundant supply of air 

 for their maintenance. Of ordinary food materials and of water 

 there are stored in the body, in more or less completely available forms, 

 considerable quantities which may be drawn upon in cases of emergency 

 when the outside supplies arc cut off. We may go days without water 

 and weeks without food, but the supply of air from the outside must 

 be continuous, as the available reserve is very small indeed. 



It is true, however, that very notable deficiencies of oxygen 

 may exist in the air of a stable for considerable lengths of time without 

 fatal consequences resulting. But never without both reducing the rate of 

 vital activilics and distorting their normal course. Under such con- 

 ditions the blood is not adequately purified, the System is poisoned, its 

 tone is lowered and the animal is predisposed to disease. We must 

 never forget that the germs of very many diseases are always about us 

 and about our domestic animals and even within their bodies. They are 

 there, but held in abeyance, just as weed seeds in a soil are prevented 

 from developing so long as a vigorous crop is kept growing upon the field. 

 Tn the very dry season of the great Chicago fire there swept across a 

 forest section of Wisconsin a tremendous conflagration which denuded 

 of everything green a stretch of country some 15 miles wide and 50 

 miles long, leaving entirely naked ground, which became so much heated 



