104 DISEASES OF SWINE 



others. The disease is especially common in Iowa, Missouri, 

 Indiana, Illinois, Nebraska, and Ohio. 



(7) Feed Lots. — The sanitary condition of the feed lots is a 

 most important factor in the predisposing causes for this disease. 

 Hog lots that are kept clean, free from filth, well drained, properly 

 fenced to keep out dogs and other animals, often remain uninfected, 

 even when the disease is widespread in the surrounding territory. 



Hogs which are kept in dirty, overcrowded feed lots, with poor 

 water-supply, filled with muddy hog wallows, and allowed to feed 

 upon carcasses of dead animals will not long remain free from 

 cholera once the disease appears in the vicinity. 



In many parts of the hog-raising belt every hog lot is provided 

 with a wallow or pond, which is filled with dirty, stagnant water that 

 becomes a literal hot-bed of infection by midsummer, and which 

 often proves to be an incubating place for the germs of the disease 

 during the winter months. 



It is a hopeful sign to note that many farmers have come to 

 recognize the danger of these insanitary hog wallows, and are now 

 constructing sanitary concrete wallows which can be supplied with 

 pure,' fresh water every few days as needed. 



During the summer of 1913, while engaged in the demonstra- 

 tion work for the United States Bureau of Animal Industry in 

 connection with the eradication of hog-cholera in Pettis County, 

 Mo., I had occasion to see a large number of farm feeding lots in 

 which these insanitary hog wallows were maintained. In many 

 instances these wallows were artificially formed simply by dam- 

 ming up a small run or watercourse in the ravine which existed 

 between two ridges in the pastures. In this manner the water was 

 dammed up in time of freshets and remained as a stagnant pool for 

 many months, affording the hogs a filthy place in which to wallow, 

 and providing for germs of all kinds, as well as for mosquitoes, an 

 ideal place for breeding and multiplication. 



These insanitary forms of hog wallow simply must go if we 

 are to accomplish the success we deserve in the fight against 

 cholera. Cholera is a preventable and an eradicable disease, but 

 we must strike at all its hiding-places if we are to thoroughly 

 conquer it and bring the hog-producing industry back on a safe 

 plane. 



