116 DISEASES OF SWINE 



(14) Chickens, like dogs, are very frequently found to cross 

 the road or dividing fences between one farm and another, and 

 especially is this true if there be a hog lot on the next farm 

 in close range of the chickens. In doing this the chickens carry 

 on their feet large amounts of infected mud and manure if they go 

 into a hog lot where cholera exists, and when thej^ return to their 

 home range they bring with them enough of the infectious virus to 

 often cause the infection of any hogs which may be in their home 

 lots. This would seem to be a very small matter, but it is just little 

 things like this which enable the disease to spread so rapidly from 

 one farm to another, especially in those districts where farms are 

 small and hog lots close together. 



(15) Hog Buyers, Butchers, Etc. — During the early part of an 

 outbreak of hog-cholera, buyers, butchers, and traders usually be- 

 come quite active in the effort to buy up at as low a price as possible 

 all available animals which farmers, fearful of an invasion of their 

 premises by the dread disease, may be willing to sacrifice. These 

 dealers usually want to enter the pens and closely examine the 

 animals of the herd, to determine in their own minds whether or 

 not any of them are sick. 



In many cases these traders and butchers come from a farm on 

 which cholera is present, and bring on their shoes manure, mud, 

 and other infectious material from the diseased pens. The result 

 is that they carry hog-cholera on to the healthy farms and new herds 

 become infected, with consequent rapid development of new areas 

 of disease. Keep these men out of your hog lots. If they want to 

 examine the hogs let them drive up alongside of the fence, and 

 you drive the hogs out where they can see them. 



Either do this or require them to thoroughly wash off their 

 shoes before entering and after leaving the pens. It is a wise pre- 

 caution to allow neither strange man nor animal to enter your hog 

 pens. If you do this you will cut down a great deal of the danger 

 of the cholera virus being carried to your farm from some adjoining 

 or distant farm where it is present. 



Many farmers carry their herds through an entire season of 

 hog-cholera without a single sick animal appearing on their farm, 

 while hogs are dying on all sides of them. In a great many cases 

 the reason for this apparent good luck is to be found in the fact 



