REPORT OF IOWA FARM BUREAU FEDERATION 425 



eggs by swallowing food or water contaminated with the droppings of 

 infested hogs. Frequent rotation of the hog crop to new and clean lands 

 will do more to check this parasite than all the drugs one can buy. 



Since the common white worm of the intestine is also spread by the 

 eggs, mature females producing new crops of hogs can be protected from 

 it by the same procedure that controls the lung worm. One county in the 

 corn belt has had as a major demonstration for some time the proper 

 management of swine to prevent worm infestation and they have shown 

 that practical methods of herd handling are easily instituted on any farm 

 that will prevent these parasites from getting a foothold in the herd. 

 Briefly stated, it is handling the hogs in clean places with frequent rota- 

 tion to new pastures and lots. 



Actual losses among our swine occur principally from contagious or 

 infectious diseases, but a careful consideration of this phase of the sub- 

 ject does not demonstrate the discovery of any disease of swine in recent 

 years that was not recognized by our best authorities of several decades 

 ago. In spite of this, there are those who would have us believe many 

 valuable and wonderful new findings have been made in recent years in 

 the field of hog diseases. 



Indeed, such emphasis has been put upon certain diseases of swine in 

 some communities as to confound and confuse both veterinarian and hog 

 owner until some have almost despaired of ever undertaking the matter 

 at all. A little careful investigation of affairs will usually convince one 

 thai much of this discussion of mixed infection and new diseases of 

 swine has been a sort of smoke-screen to cloak ignorance of the true con- 

 dition existing or for a means of getting dollars by some unscrupulous 

 individual. 



Pages have been written regarding it and innumerable discussions pre- 

 sented by its sponsors, but their own conception of the disease seems 

 poorly founded, for the more it is discussed the less they teach and 

 specifi(5s in the nature of vaccines while widely exploited as curative have 

 failed miserably to give results. 



Realizing that many are misled by the government license label on 

 these goods, the American Veterinary Medical Association more than a 

 year ago recommended that inspection and license be refused to all these 

 vaccines of questionable merit and it is safe to say had this suggestion 

 been adopted many Iowa farmers would still have some hogs to feed 

 instead of a dead herd lost from cholera while some one was busy in- 

 jecting these worthless vaccines into them under the impression they 

 were treating a disease that did not exist. 



The stockman bears most of this burden and should join with the ethical 

 veterinarians to do all we possibly can to check this business which costs 

 so much and permits cholera to spread all over the state. 



The facts as we know them now regarding infectious diseases of swine 

 indicate that there are three different conditions to deal with: First, 

 hog cholera, a disease that is truly speaking a septicemia. That is to 

 say, it is due to a virus that multiplies in the body of hogs and saturates 

 all the body fluids, producing lesions to a greater or lesser extent in 

 practically all organs, but no constant set of lesions in any organ. True, 

 it usually produces visible changes of a hemorrhagic character of kid- 



