182 



THE LANCASTER FARMERS 



[December, 



narrow ; here are the oxen shod, especially on 

 hilly land; in level places we know nothing of 

 it ; at some places are the harrows apart in 

 tlie middle, and are hooked together with 

 iron rings, so they can give and have a better 

 grip. iJefore everything a good farmer 

 should have plenty of farming implements, 

 so he may not have want in time of need, be- 

 cause it is vexatious and olTeiisive in time of 

 need to borrow from your neighbor and sel- 

 dom without bad feeling and ill-will, because 

 the most of times you bring it back worse 

 than you got it ; therefore, should the farmer 

 in time prepare what he may want in time of 

 need. Especially should the farmer in the 

 winter time repair such implements or make 

 new ; or on rainy and stormy weather, when 

 he cannot work in the fields and it compels 

 him to stay in tlie house, he might repair all 

 kinds of wagons with ladders, beams, dung- 

 boards, lime boxes, presses, and anything 

 that is wanted, or may be wanted in the 

 future. Yoke-bows, felloes, spokes, wagon 

 wheels, tongues, hay beams, sieves, sleighs, 

 plows, rollers, dimg, hay, corn and straw 

 forks, shovels, rakes, curry combs, trestles, 

 grindstone, all kind of large and small sieves, 

 rider, grain shovel, grain fan, stamper, mal- 

 let, troughs, tremel, reber, axes, digging 

 iron, drawing knife, hub rings, auger, ladder, 

 drawing bench, traces, breast chains, bands, 

 plough irons, seed baskets, bags, and all kinds 

 of articles belonging to farming ; iron work, 

 horse shoes, shine nails, wagon rings, Inib 

 rings, single-tree, sickles, saws, cutting 

 knife, snitzer, steiumeiser, hammer, stamp 

 handle, smith work, sleigh boxes, and every- 

 thing of the kind at least double ou hand, 

 that when the busy time comes, if anything 

 breaks, or is needed, or to have to be fetched 

 at a strange place, when the work is pressing 

 in harvest time or otherwise, and the neces- 

 sary work must be stopped and the time lost 

 thereby, it is not even enough that the farmer 

 has all these things double and plenty if he 

 does not keep them in a systematic and pro- 

 per iilace, because it is a small difference in 

 time of need, something not to have, or have 

 and not know where to find it. 

 ^ ' 



For The Lancaster Fabueb. 

 SPLENIC, OR PERIODIC FEVER OF 

 CATTLE. 



In Missouri, Kansas, Arkansas, Virginia, 

 Kentucky, Carolina and Georgia, the so- 

 called Spanish or Texas fever has been the 

 causes of losses prior to and since the war, 

 and this has occasioned the most violent feel- 

 ing of opposition among stock raisers to the 

 driving of these cattle through those States. 

 A Missourian's letter, to a prairie farmer, 

 says, "Talk to a Missourian about modera- 

 tion when a drove of Texas cattle is coming 

 and he will call you a fool, while he coolly 

 loads his gun to kill, and he does kill the cat- 

 tle until the drove takes the back track; and 

 the drovers must be careful not to get between 

 the enraged farmers and the cattle." Tliis 

 looks like a sort of border ruffianism, but it is 

 the way to keep clear of the Texas fever. Illi- 

 nois will yet have to do the same thing. Con- 

 gress should do something in the matter ; very 

 stringent laws were passed in regard to the 

 rinderpest, and yet it is scarcely more fatal 

 than Texas fever. Texas stock should not l)e 

 allowed to pass the thirty-fifth parallel of 

 north latitude alive. Texas has five million 

 head, worth eight to ten dollars gold; the net 

 yearly increase, after deducting twenty-five 

 per cent, for loss, by disease and other casual- 

 ties, amounts to seven hundred and fifty 

 thousand head. 



It is impossible to exaggerate the suflfering 

 of Texan cattle as they are transported by 

 steamer from the Texan coast to Nevi' Orleans 

 and thence to eastern and western cities'. 

 They are gathered in droves of two to twelve 

 hundred steers, and driven at the rate of 

 eight to ten miles a day for six to nine hun- 

 dred miles. Whether we study the malady as 

 seen in Texas, or Smoky Hill, in Kansas, 

 where sudden shocks to the system of a steer 

 that has stampeded, developed symptoms or 



produce death ; or look to the other animals 

 apparently fresh, and grazing, it is evident 

 that a large herd traveling from the region 

 whence splenic fever is propagated, carries 

 not only the active cause of such propagation, 

 but the evidence of specific disease induced, 

 which remains for an indefinite time latent 

 and unobserved. It has been observed when- 

 ever and wherever cattle from the States on 

 the Gulf of Mexico have been driven North 

 during the summer monlh.s — and is most 

 marked in cattle of Georgia, Tennessee, Vir- 

 ginia, Kentucky, Missouri, Kansas, Illinois 

 and Indiana — wherever these cattle have 

 grazed simultaneously or after Texas lierds. 

 It is incapable of communication by simple 

 contact of sick with healthy animals, and 

 in the strict sense of the term is 

 neither contagious nor infectious. It is 

 an enzootic disorder, probably due to the 

 food on which Southern cattle subsist, wherebj' 

 the system of these animals becomes charged 

 with deleterious principles that is afterwards 

 propagated and dispersed by the excretia of 

 apparently healthy animals as well as ob- 

 viously sick stock. The malady is probably 

 incapable of communication by inoculation, 

 and the flesh, blood and secretions of such 

 cattle have been handled and consumed by 

 human beings without the manifestation of 

 untoward results. Texas cattle, from all 

 ages, are aftlicted with it in a somewhat latent 

 and mild form, and its incubation is from five 

 to six weeks duration; the temperature of the 

 body then rises, the secretions are checked, 

 and indications of depression and listnessness 

 are afforded by drooping head, depressed ears, 

 arched back, approximation of limbs and 

 indisposition to move or to rise when down, 

 urine mostly dark, of port-wine color, and is 

 retained for hours, and then evacuated in 

 considerable quantities; hurried breathing 

 and tremors are almost invariable symptoms, 

 more or less paralysis in hind quarters, fore 

 quarters, or both. When the brain is affected 

 it occasions wild, staring gaze, and in the first 

 case there is more or less blindness. Animals 

 recover, especially if from the South, but in 

 the northern stock is extremely fatal, destroy- 

 ing most every animal attacked. Death 

 usually occurs in three to four days, and may 

 not occur for from twelve days to six weeks. 

 Death is usually produced by great prostra- 

 tion, the animal lying and refusing to rise, 

 retention of urine, head occasionally drawn 

 forcibly around to the right side, and the 

 muscles of the neck twitching without much 

 intermission. Cows having splenic fever will 

 suddenly yield but half the usual quantity of 

 milk; at first the animal eats, ruminates occa- 

 sionally, and its paunch appears full, but soon 

 it will lie down, preferring a pool of water. 

 The depressed head, drooping ears, arched 

 back, hollow and twitching flanks have a ten- 

 dency to draw the hind legs under the belly, 

 and kimckling over over at the fetlocks behind, 

 are early and marked symptoms; the skin is 

 dry and rigid. A small delicate blood-clot is 

 apt to be seen on the surface of the droppings; 

 at first the urine is clear. Many cases, it is 

 true, may not be known until the urine is 

 bloody; in ten to fifteen per cent, the urine 

 remains its natural color. When bloody urhie 

 flows death will soon follow. 



The skin, very often infested with ticks, is 

 occasionally studded with dried drops of 

 blood, as if the animal had sweated blood. 

 The spleen usually presents a dark color, with 

 a deep red pulp, which oozes out of incisions 

 made through the capule, and weigh in native 

 cattle one-half pound, Texas two and a half, 

 and Cherokee two and a quarter pounds, 

 in health ; while from splenic fever it 

 is enlarged from two to twelve pounds, but 

 rarely exceeds eight. The scraping with a 

 knife readily forces out tlie currant-jelly-like 

 pulp, and leaves the trabecular free and 

 clear. In thirty noted diseased spleens Dr. 

 Manheimes found only two in which the trab- 

 ecular were firm and sound. They are gen- 

 erally destroyed and undistinguishable from 

 any other part of the tissues of the organ. 

 Dr. Ranch, medical oflicer of Chicago, aflilrms 



that the meat is not poisonous, and is incapa- 

 ble of injuring human beings. The flesh 

 shows no signs of morbid change. During a 

 period of three months cattle were allowed to 

 die in Illinois and Indiana, but when large 

 herds were attacked they tried to get as many 

 sold in eastern markets as possible. Cattle 

 trucks have thus been filled in large numbers 

 with infected steers, which died or were 

 slaughtered and connnittcd to the rendering 

 tanks ; but not a single case has transpired to 

 show that these animals have induced any 

 disease in the stock of eastern cattle. How 

 different from rinderpest, or lung fever, 

 which, under similar circumstances, would 

 have caused the farmers of Ohio, Pennsylva- 

 nia ami New York to record a bitter experi- 

 ence, similar to that of the much injured Illi- 

 nois farmer. Texan steers are the most 

 dangerous innnediately after leaving Texas, 

 but after they have traveled a long dstance 

 they are less liable to do mischief ; hence the 

 conclusion, that if cattle are driven into 

 Kansas, Missouri or other States in the sum- 

 mer or autunm of one year, and grazed in 

 such States during the winter and spring they 

 can be readily intermixed without danger. 

 Texas herds, therefore, do purify themselves. 

 The point is to know the exact time it takes, 

 and if means can be used to accelerate the 

 result. A nipping frost is the most eflectual 

 cure, as it destroys the vegetation upon which 

 the cattle feed, thereby destroying the most 

 plausible source of transmission. Texan 

 steers can graze side by side with native cat- 

 tle, only having a fence between them, with- 

 out transmission, thereby thoroughly and 

 successfully refuting the idea of tick trans- 

 mission, as the ticks are not easily fenced in. 

 Both native and Texan cattle, dead and alive, 

 have been seen entirely free from ticks. 

 There has been no relation whatever between 

 the abundance of the ticks and the severity 

 of the disorder. It is supposed that the ticks 

 are eaten, but close examination has ever 

 failed to trace any of them, during the de- 

 velopment of the disease, in the alimentary 

 canal. 



The tick is not confined to Gulf coast cat- 

 tle, which we know communicate the disea.se, 

 but it is met in many States where cattle are 

 reared that never cause splenic fever. Why 

 should the ticks not communicate the malady 

 from Western steers to other cattle, if they 

 can induce it by crawling from Texan to 

 ■Western stock ? It is not contact with the 

 cattle that transmits the disease, as they have 

 been housed together, watered together, the 

 sick with the well, with no bad eftects. 



Splenic fever is an enzootic ; it originates 

 in the Gulf States. Florida cattle driven 

 north are as dangerous as Texans, deriving 

 the same deleterious properties from the soil 

 on which they are reared, in all probability 

 the vegetation on which they feed. Milk 

 sickness is due to cattle feeding on low wood- 

 land pastures, where poisonous plants abound. 

 The poison which contaminates the food is 

 capable, through that food, of attacking a 

 second and third animal or as many as par- 

 take of it. Here is a striking similarity be- 

 tween milk sickness or trembles, and splenic 

 fever. The animal, food poisoned, may show 

 no sign unless driven hard or frightened. 

 Texas cattle accustomed to feed ou certain 

 pastures thrive, and their systems throw oft', 

 in excretions, these poisons for three or 

 four months after they leave their native 

 soil. Herds of these animals necessarily de- 

 posit a large amount of whatever they ex- 

 crete, and thus pastures are contaminated, 

 the grasses of which prove deadly poison to 

 healthy and susceptible cattle. It is certain 

 that the herding of cattle on the lands over 

 which Texan cattle have passed, is the ordi- 

 nary and probably the invariable cause of 

 splenic fever. The .systems are charged with 

 poisonous principles, which accumulate in the 

 bodies of the acclimatized animals that en- 

 joy an immunity. 



Southern cattle may be driven so as to im- 

 prove in condition, and yet for from two 

 weeks to three months continue to excrete the 



