200 DISEASES OF SWINE 



prevention, they will have far less cholera, far less losses from the 

 disease, and these precautionary measures when combined with 

 the proper use of a reliable hog-cholera serum should rapidly wipe 

 out the disease in any given locality. 



In the summer of 1911 I had occasion to see an outbreak of 

 hog-cholera due to impure water which was brought about in the 

 following manner. This outbreak started on the farm of a renter 

 located along the course of a shallow creek which flowed for several 

 miles through a rich farming community on its way to a small 

 river. As is usually the case, numerous hog lots were located 

 along the course of this stream. 



The farmer in question, however, did not have his hog lot 

 located on the stream, but it ran through a small woods pasture 

 about a half-mile from the hog lots. Early in the spring his animals 

 began to get off feed, and in a few days had developed a typical 

 outbreak of cholera. Just how they contracted the disease I was 

 not able to find out. In the course of a week they were dying in 

 bunches of 5 or 6 every day. At first he undertook to bury the 

 dead animals, but when they began to die in such large numbers 

 he found that it occupied too much of his time to dispose of the 

 dead carcasses in this manner, and so he devised an easy method 

 of disposing of them. 



Every morning he hitched up a team to a wagon and drove 

 through the feed lot and gathered up the dead. They were then 

 hauled down across the field to the woods pasture and dumped 

 into the creek. Here the bodies rapidly decomposed and were 

 swept away by the current. The woods were soon filled with an 

 enormous flock of buzzards and crows, which also aided in the dis- 

 posal of the carcasses, and, incidentally, in the scattering of the 

 disease. 



The results of this method of disposal of the dead carcasses 

 are not hard to foresee. The decomposing and rotten dead animal 

 tissue, laden with hog-cholera \arus, was swept down the creek 

 and through dozens of other hog lots lower down in its course. 

 In about ten days other herds along the course of the stream began 

 to show signs of illness, and in a fortnight the outbreak was in full 

 swing, involving over fifty herds along the course of the stream. 

 The buzzards and crows served to carry the infection to the farms 



