244 DISEASES OF SWINE 



On one occasion I am quite convinced that the disease among 

 the chickens was the cause of the outbreak in the swine. Not that 

 chicken-cholera and hog-cholera are the same by any means. The 

 two diseases are entirely independent, and chicken-cholera is not 

 by any means transmissible to swine, and neither is the disease of 

 hogs transmissible to fowl. There was an outbreak of cholera 

 among the chickens on a certain farm in central Iowa about the 

 first of July, and the flock began to die in large numbers. Most 

 anywhere you might go in the pastures you could find a large pullet 

 or cockrel dead and decomposing. Those birds which died around 

 the house were gathered up and thrown out in the center of a large 

 stubble field, a short distance from the house. Here they were left 

 to decompose and rot. 



It was not long until there could be seen circling in the air the 

 ever-alert buzzards, attracted from miles away by this opportunity 

 for a feast. It was afterward found that the most likely source 

 from which these buzzards came was a hog-cholera-infected farm 

 nearly one hundred miles further north. In any event, they 

 unquestionably brought with them the germs of cholera infection, 

 for about two weeks after their arrival in the neighborhood hogs 

 on several of the surrounding farms, as well as the cholera-infected 

 premises, began to show signs of illness of a peculiar character. 

 The diagnosis of this disease among the swine was not long in 

 doubt. Deaths by the dozen, with typical postmortem findings 

 of old-fashioned cholera, left no question as to the nature of the 

 outbreak. 



This outbreak illustrates how dangerous is the practice of 

 leaving any dead carcass of any kind exposed where it may become 

 the cause of attracting buzzards. The buzzard has no preference, 

 and will be readily attracted by a dead carcass of any kind, be it 

 chicken, horse, man, hog, sheep, cow, or what not. 



This outbreak also goes to show how readily these birds can 

 scatter cholera virus over a neighborhood, not only on the farm to 

 which they are attracted, but also nearby farms over which they 

 circle. It is a typical characteristic of the buzzards that they 

 circle over wide areas, and in their flight they often loosen large 

 fragments of disease-producing material from their claws, which, 

 falUng into a hog pasture, readily become the means of spreading 



