162 DISEASES OF SWINE 



As it was very unhandy to bury the animal in the city, the son 

 sent a hired man in from the farm, and the dead carcass was loaded 

 on the wagon and hauled out to the farm, where it was dumped 

 over into the feed lot and left for the other hogs to eat, which 

 they very quickly did. The remaining barrow in the city also died 

 in a few days, and this dead hog was also taken out and fed to the 

 hogs at the farm. 



A neighbor just across the alley in the city had one hog which 

 he had been fattening. This animal was noticed one morning to 

 be slightly droopy He at once called up a local butcher, and the 

 hog was killed that afternoon. It would be hard to say if this hog 

 was getting sick with cholera or not, as it was killed before the 

 symptoms had a good chance to fully develop, and, as there was 

 no meat inspection in this town, it is not possible to say whether 

 the bowels, liver, kidneys, or lungs showed cholera marks or 

 not. 



Six days after the first dead barrow had been hauled out to 

 the farm and fed to the well animals in the herd there, 3 of the 

 young shoats in the lot were noted to be sick, and on the next 

 morning the disease was seen to be starting in an old boar who had 

 been suffering with a diarrhea all summer, due to some sort of chronic 

 inflammation of the bowels. Ten days later a number of old 

 sows in the feed lot were developing the same signs of disease, and 

 from this time on the death of 3 or 4 animals was a daily occur- 

 rence. Before the disease had run its course in this herd over 80 per 

 cent, of the hogs on the place had died. 



It was a most costly experience, indeed, for this man, and we will 

 now go over it carefully, and try and pick out the important lessons 

 that can be derived from it. 



To begin with, the plan of raising hogs on kitchen slop and 

 table refuse is a very poor practice. While table refuse and kitchen 

 slop when fresh, as it was in this case, is not so very dangerous, it 

 is not by any means a suitable food for any form of animal. We 

 cannot expect even a hog to do well when he is forced to eat such 

 food. When, as is usually the case, the slop is allowed to stand 

 for hours or even days in filthy slop barrels, and decompose 

 and rot before being fed to the animals, it becomes absolutely 

 a disease-breeding food, and no hogs can be kept on this 



