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757- When the complaint rages in the epizootic form, and attacks 

 stock on various farms for miles around, it is then that its baneful 

 effect is most bitterly felt. Most of the abortion outbreaks that have 

 occurred in my district have been cases where a farmer changed his 

 holding, sold off his cattle, and then purchased from other farm sales 

 and auction marts a new stock of in-calf cows, most of them three-parts 

 gone in calf; and then from injury caused by galloping, or by mountmg 

 on each other's backs, one or more of them has aborted. Again, from 

 being tied up on the wrong side m a strange byre amongst strange 

 companions, a cow of a fretful nature becomes so unsettled that it 

 casts its calf, with the result that most of the others do the same, more 

 especially if the animal commencing it has come from an infected herd. 

 The introduction of a newly aborted animal into a byre, or pasture, 

 containing in-calf animals is often the means of spreading the 

 complaint, while allowing a cow, even at full time, to calve in a 

 byre amongst others that are pregnant is, in my opinion, one of the 

 chief causes of outbreaks of abortion amongst cows. 



75S. Ergot of Rye, eaten b}' the cows, has been named as a great 

 producer of the malady, but I have never yet been able to trace an 

 outbreak to this source. The complaint is as frequent in winter as in 

 summer, and if ergot is a cause it is difficult to imagine how a cow 

 fed on roots, straw, cake, corn, and hay, can get a sufficient quantity 

 of ergot to produce abortion. That the epidemic form is highly 

 contagious there can be little doubt, and it is now thought by many 

 to be due to a micro-organism. This may be so, but I am not yet 

 convinced that the germ enters the gravid uterus by means of the 

 vaginal passage, because it is well known that the neck of the womb, 

 during gestation, is hermetically sealed against external influences. 



759. The abolition of abortion, in my opinion, is of as great 

 importance as the abolition of tuberculosis, and ought to be legislated 

 for by the Government. An Act of Parliament should be passed 

 making criminal the exposure for sale of an aborted animal, or the 

 sending out to grass, amongst other pregnant cows, of an animal 

 that has slipped its calf, until a slated interval has passed. Formerly 



