452 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 



is not a new problem, but at this time, under the spur of the -world's 

 necessity, it should be taken up anew and given all the consideration 

 and enthusiasm usually accorded to brand-new questions. For the 

 hog cholera specter is abroad in the land and, as usual at this time of the 

 year, growing in virulence with the approach of winter. Cholera con- 

 trol is absolutely necessary if the present rather limited supply of 

 breeding animals is to be conserved for future usefulness; and unless 

 the supply is conserved conscientiously that second .pig will certainly 

 fail to materialize. 



TRIBULATION FOR THE PIG 



The way of the ninteenth-century porker is thickly beset with trials 

 and tribulations in the form of parasites, external and internal, and 

 ailments of one kind and another, chief of which is cholera. It is estimated 

 that not less than 90 per cent of all the hogs that die each year in 

 the United States die of cholera. That means that when a pig sud- 

 denly shows symptoms of sickness the chances are nine to one it has 

 cholera. 



Hog cholera first appeared in Ohio more than eighty years ago and 

 has been the source of enormous annual losses to swine breeders ever 

 since. It has been distributed far and wide, and if there remains a 

 nook or a corner anywhere in Uncle Sam's great domain that has not been 

 ravaged by this scourge it is because that particular nook or corner has 

 never been utilized for the production of pork. 



VIRUDLEKCE OF DISEASE NOT UNDERSTOOD 



It may sound superfluous to the reader to say that hog cholera is 

 highly contagious. Everybody is supposed to know that. Just the same, 

 a host of breeders fail to appreciate the real deadliness of the disease 

 in spite of all that has been preached, promulgated and experienced. 

 This must be so, else the veterinary officials and others working so 

 manfully to control the disease would be favored with more universal 

 support and cooperation than is given them. 



Just how the Buckeye State picked up hog cholera more than three- 

 quarters of a century ago, or when, where or how the disease originated 

 nobody knows. The claim is frequently made that cholera i3 the result 

 of feeding new corn at this time of the year, a conclusion reached, 

 probably, because, for some unknown reason fatalities reach the high 

 mark during the months of November and December. 



Feeding new corn is not a cause. Veterinary authorities agree that 

 cholera is a germ disease. Beyond that point they have been unable to 

 proceed because up to the present time no man has been able to locate 

 and brand the particular germ that is responsible for the deviltry. Like 

 the foot-and-mouth- disease germ, it is so infinitesimally small that the 

 most powerful microscopes have failed to locate it. 



But if the germ is too small and insignificant to tag, there is no limit 

 to its virulence and powers of destruction. Men who have made an ex- 

 haustive study of the disease and whose word and opinions are, there- 

 fore, dependable, inform us that as many as 7,000,000 hogs have died of 



