250 DISEASES OF SWINE 



When there is an outbreak of cholera on a farm, usually about 

 the first thing the owner thinks of is to get the animals which are 

 not yet sick off to market just as soon as possible. The result 

 is that there are loaded through these local yards and chutes a 

 number of sick animals. The discharges from these animals are 

 capable of causing disease, and they leave behind them a diseased 

 stock-yard. It is very seldom that the railroad company or any- 

 one else has any local arrangement for disinfection of these pens 

 after the sick animals have been loaded out of them. In justice 

 to the railroad companies it should be said that the apparent 

 neglect in this instance is not due to carelessness, but rather to 

 ignorance of the danger, and most frequently they have no knowl- 

 edge as to whether the herds shipped are diseased or not. The 

 railroad companies are as much interested in the development of 

 the hog industry along their lines as the farmers themselves, and 

 are usually always ready to go to considerable trouble and expense 

 to aid in the checking of the disease in the districts along their 

 Hnes when they are shown the correct method of doing so. It is 

 purely a commercial proposition with them. More hogs mean 

 more freight, and more freight means more net earnings and bigger 

 dividends. 



As a result of the present methods of shipment and lack of 

 proper regulation of public stock-yards practically every public 

 stock-yard in the United States is a cholera-infected one, and any 

 hogs coming through these yards are liable to become diseased. 

 Especially is this the case where hogs are unloaded at a public 

 stock-yard, fed and watered, and reloaded. Under such circum- 

 stances as these it is nothing short of a miracle if the animals escape 

 getting cholera. 



Hogs which have been shipped into large public yards, resold 

 to shippers, and taken out to the farms as stockers are always 

 very likely to develop cholera in spite of the best of sanitary con- 

 ditions which may exist on the farms to which they may be 

 shipped. 



Not only are these public yards a source of danger to the hogs 

 that pass through them, but they are equally dangerous when cattle, 

 sheep, or horses are brought through these infected pens on the 

 way from the large live-stock markets to the farms where they are 



