210 DISEASES OF SWINE 



always bring with them the germs of infection. They collect 

 wherever cholera is found and they carry with them to other 

 pastures the disease-producing material of the disease. Make it an 

 unbreakable rule never to leave a dead animal carcass exposed in 

 your feed lots or hog pastures. 



Feeding of swill collected from hotels and restaurants and city 

 dwellings is another great danger in the spread of hog-cholera. 

 This swill almost invariably contains pieces of bacon rind, ham 

 trimmings, bones, and other refuse from pork. These scraps very 

 frequently come from a hog-cholera carcass in which the lesions 

 were so slight that the carcass is passed for food, or they may come 

 from animals which were slaughtered in packing plants where there 

 is no government inspection. In these latter cases these meat 

 trimmings very often carry large amounts of disease-producing 

 cholera germs, and will very quickly infect your herds. If you are 

 going to feed swill collected from these sources, lessen the danger by 

 placing it in a large open kettle and boiling thoroughly before using, 

 so as to destroy any infectious material that it may contain. Even 

 then you are running a risk in using this class of food. 



Dirty, rotten foods of all kinds should be thrown out in feeding 

 swine if you desire to keep them healthy. You cannot expect a 

 hog to keep healthy on food that is so stinking and rotten that no 

 other animal will eat it. Keep your swill barrels reasonably clean, 

 and treat the hogs on your farm with some regard for cleanliness 

 and wholesomeness of food. These dirty, decomposing foods may 

 not produce cholera in themselves, but they do produce gastro- 

 intestinal disorders, especially in young pigs and shoats, and these 

 open the way for entrance of cholera germs and the outbreak of a 

 fatal epidemic of the disease in animals which might have been 

 able to throw off the invaders if their stomachs and bowels had been 

 kept in good condition by proper food. 



In the slops that come from the kitchen there are often included 

 considerable amounts of soap, salt brine, and other irritating sub- 

 stances, which have a very harmful effect upon the gastro-intestinal 

 tract of the hog, producing subacute and even acute inflammations, 

 with diarrhea, vomiting, and loss of appetite. Frequently these 

 disturbances are so marked that the animal dies of the attack, and 

 many of these cases are set down as deaths from cholera, when, 



