DISEASE AMONG SWINE AND OTHER DOMESTIC ANIMALS. 47 



have found both easily curable. The cause of the sore mouth is not known here. It 

 is not a general but rather a local and rare disease, and never fatal if properly treated, 

 I have never seen it until this summer, when some 1,200 of my lambs had it. The lips 

 are first covered with "chai>s," followed by pustules which grow thick scabs. These 

 extend gradually over the thin skin about the mouth and into the nose, making the 

 face extremely sore and feverish, and prevent the lambs from nursing well or graz- 

 ing. I had the pustules and the scabs scraped off clean and a solution of carbolic acid 

 applied with a brush, which effectually cured it. 



Mr. A. H. McCoy, Gentry ville, Spencer Connty, Indiana, says : 



In answer to your inquiries I shall only notice the diseases affecting hogs. I have 

 been a breeder of hogs for forty years, and during that time have never known any 

 disease among swine so fatal as cholera. This county loses from ten to twenty 

 thousand dollars per annum by the disease. As I have been a breeder of fine pigs for 

 more than twenty years, I have been unusually interested in the diseases of swine, and 

 have been able to guard against every other disease but cholera. Mange is generally 

 engendered by filthy quarters; thumps by general debility, mostly for lack of healthy 

 feed ; but cholera, beyond reasonable doubt, is a contagion, and is carried from herd to 

 herd by hogs affected with the disease. Near twenty-five years ago, when the cholera 

 first made its appearance in our county, I discovered it was neariug my neighborhood, 

 and as it was very fatal, and fearing it was contagious, I fenced about six acres in on 

 the inside of my farm, some eighty or one hundred yards from any outside fencing. 

 The result was, I did not lose any of my thirty- five head, though my nearest neighbors 

 lost from one-half to about all their hogs. Since that time my observation and_exper- 

 ieuce have been the same. 



Last winter I lost over twenty head of fine Berkshire hogs and pigs, caused by a'gang 

 of hogs affected with cholera being driven into my immediate neighborhood for the 

 purpose of feeding on the mast, which was abundant. The symptoms, &c., are as fol- 

 lows : 



1. A cough which lasts two or three days, and a strolling, restless disposition. 



2. Vomiting, which generally lasts about a day ; hog very sick. 



3. Purging, generally, but not invariably, lasts two or three days. 



4. After the purging ceases, if the hog is likely to recover, it will generally eat a lit- 

 tle ; but those that ultimately die seldom eat anything after the vomiting sets in. 

 Those that die usually do so within from forty-eight hours to ten days. 



5. After vomiting sets in the hog has a high inward fever, accompanied with chilly 

 sensations, a symptom I discovered by observation. Snow was on the ground last win- 

 ter, and it was very cold at the time my hogs were dying with the cholera. Very often 

 they would leave their beds for the purpose of eating snow, which they would continue 

 for a long time, though they had plenty of water ; then they would pile together and 

 shiver, which they will do even in warm weather if they have the cholera. 



As to remedies, I have tried a number of the most popular ones without any favor- 

 able results ; indeed, I am satisfied there is no cure. The best preventive beyond all 

 doubt is the fencing-in system — let no hogs run at large. The next is the scattering sys- 

 tem — have but few together. Farmers lose on an average about one-half the number 

 of their hogs whenever the disease gets into a large herd. 



Mr. J. Zimmerman, Mount Carmel, Wabasli County, Illinois, says : 



No diseases among farm animals have recently come under my observation, except 

 diseases among swine. With the variovis forms of so-called,hog-cholera I have had con- 

 siderable experience in my own stock, and observation among that of my neighbors. 

 The report of Dr. Detmers to the Missouri State Board of Agriculture, a year or two 

 ago, contains, in the main, a better description of the disease than I could give, as well 

 as the best remedial and preventive prescriptions I have yet tried. His statement, how- 

 ever, that hogs kept in small numbers, as by people in towns, are comparatively free 

 from disease, is not at all borne out by the facts in this vicinity. 



The greatest fatality is among pigs ; but I am well convinced this is to a very con- 

 siderable extent from mange, although denominated " cholera," with all other diseases 

 to which the hog is subject. While induced in many instances by perfectly obvious 

 causes, I think the mange in many cases is inherited, or is the result of injudicious 

 breeding. For instance, I have one sow, now suckling her third litter, whose pigs in 

 each case have been mangy, although treated as other pigs that remained free from 

 mange. She has in each case been bred to her own sire ; none of my other sows have 

 been bred to a related male. It sometimes happens with me that a sow couples with a 

 young, immature male ; the progeny in nearly every such case are diseased. 



The nesting of swine under barn-floors and the like, i. e., under any low, tight cov- 

 ering, where there is not free circulation of air about the animals, is, in my experience, 

 a certain inducing cause of cholera. 



