158 DISEASES OF SWINE 



During the summer of 1910 a large stock-raiser in central 

 Nebraska bought a number of hogs at a public sale some few miles 

 distant over in another county. There had been no cholera for a 

 long time around the neighborhood where these hogs were bought, 

 but they had no doubt been exposed in some way without the 

 knowledge of the owner, as they began to get sick within three 

 days after they had been brought home and placed on the new feed 

 lots. The symptoms which they showed were those of regular old- 

 fashioned cholera, and when one of them was cut open after death 

 the changes found were, without any question, those produced by 

 cholera. 



When these new hogs were brought on the place they had been 

 at once turned into the regular feed lots with the hogs that had been 

 raised on the farm during the summer. As soon as the owner saw 

 that the new hogs were getting sick he at once took them out of this 

 feed lot, and put them in a pen by themselves, quite a ways from 

 the old herd. None of the hogs of the old herd showed any signs 

 of being sick for about fourteen days. On the morning of the 

 fourteenth day, when he went out to feed, the owner found that 

 several of the spring shoats did not come up, and when they were 

 roused out of the sheds it was easy to see that there was something 

 wrong with them. About two days later several of the old sows 

 were sick. 



This man's experience shows many very interesting things 

 about cholera that it will pay to stop for a few seconds and study 

 carefully, in order that we may not have a like experience happen 

 in our own herds. 



In the first place, this man made a big mistake when he brought 

 these strange hogs home and at once placed them in the same feed 

 lots with his own herd. We will see many examples of cases where 

 this is done, and it is only too often that the result is an outbreak 

 of cholera which wipes out every animal on the place. Whenever 

 you bring any new hogs on the farm, first place them in a pen or 

 feed lot a long ways off from your other hogs, and keep them thus 

 separated for at least twenty-one or, preferably, thirty days. 

 If you do this you will have a chance to make sure that they 

 are not fikely to develop cholera or any other disease which the 

 other hogs with which you place them might catch from them. 



