104 REPORT OF THE SCOTTISH COMMISSION 



fully grown, a dry food of hay has to be used ; red clover, lucerne, 

 timothy grass, and brome grass are the favourites on cultivated 

 ground, and on unbroken ground the hay is made of such grasses or 

 sedges as may be found, but except where there are sloughs or rivers 

 the natural hay is not very abundant. In the ranch country of 

 Alberta, however, the ranch cattle, which go out all winter and 

 have to pick up what food they can, are often provided with hay 

 during snow. Straw, as a rule, cannot be much relied on for fodder 

 except when cut green and stacked early. The hot sun makes most 

 of it very dry and brittle. 



Cattle Embargo 



A report on the Canadian cattle industry would be incomplete 

 which did not touch on the question of the removal of the restric- 

 tions against the importation of Canadian cattle into this country. 

 As it is a subject, however, of much controversy, we shall content 

 ourselves with an impartial statement of facts rather than an 

 expression of our own opinion. 



1. As far as the ordinary infectious diseases, pleuro-pneumonia, 

 foot and mouth disease, rinderpest, Texas fever, mange, etc., 

 are concerned, no trace of them could be detected in any of the cattle 

 seen in any part of the Dominion. It is, of course, admitted that 

 there are bad thrivers and tuberculous cattle in Canada as well as 

 at home, though probably not so many of them. 



2. The onus of reporting infectious disease, as at home, lies on 

 the owner of the stock. But it must be borne in mind that many 

 owners are new settlers, a proportion of them being but badly 

 informed as to the wants of cattle and their diseases, also that in the 

 west, distances are very great and the population sparse. All these 

 points tend to make it difficult to obtain a really reliable knowledge 

 of the state of health of the live stock generally, however ably and 

 actively the duties of the Officials of The Health of Animals' Branch 

 of the Department of Agriculture may be attended to. 



3. The precautions adopted for the detection of diseases in stock 

 imported from the United States, Newfoundland, or Mexico, consist 

 in a chain of sixty-seven inspection stations, at or near the frontier, 

 where all live stock must enter, and where arrangements exist for 

 the inspection to which all imported live stock are subject. The 

 veterinary inspecting officers at these sixty-two stations act on 

 their own initiative, or at the instigation of the Customs officers, 

 who collect the heavy duty of 20 per cent, levied on cattle from the 

 United States. A very heavy fine is chargeable, with liability to 

 confiscation of the stock, for any attempt to evade the Customs 

 officers, or to cross the frontier without payment of the duty. 

 Over such a length of frontier, in many places unfenced, very close 

 policing cannot be looked for, and reliance is placed on the heavy 

 nature of the punishment, to which the lawbreaker would be liable, 

 as a sufficient deterrent against any infringement of the regula- 

 tions. The numbers of cattle at or near the frontier on either side 



