482 DISEASES OF CATTLE. 



at this figure $3 per head, allowing an individual weight of 600 

 pounds for all classes of animals, so that the loss on approximately 

 2,000,000 southern cattle from the quarantined area, including stock, 

 beef, and dairy animals, marketed yearly under these conditions 

 will sum up a loss of $6,000,000 per annum. Carrying this estimate 

 still further, it will be found that this decreased value reacts and 

 fixes the valuation of all cattle which remain in the infected territory, 

 thereby reducing the assets of the cattle industry of that section by this 

 ratio per head for the 11,000,000 cattle which are at this time (Janu- 

 ary, 1916) estimated to be below the quarantine line; or, altogether, 

 the enormous shrinkage in value of $33,000,000 directly chargeable 

 to the cattle tick. This last sum, however, should not be considered in 

 determining the yearly devastation caused by the cattle tick, but 

 rather as an unnecessary reduction in the assets of the infected 

 country. This loss does not include the decrease in flesh and lack of 

 development of southern cattle occasioned by the parasitic life of 

 the ticks from without and by the blood-destroj'ing and enervating 

 properties of the protozoan parasites from within, an additional loss 

 which is so very great that a conservative estimate would place it 

 at not less than $20,000,000 for the cattle annually marketed. 



The presence of the tick among the cattle of the South not only 

 lessens the value of the cattle on the hoof but causes the gradings of 

 hides that have been infested with ticks as No. 4 quality. The same 

 hide, if free from tick marks, would grade No. 2. The difference 

 in price between these two grades of hides is 3 cents a pound. As 

 the hide of a southern steer weighs about 42 pounds, the presence of 

 the tick in the hide causes a loss in the hide alone of more than $1.26 

 a hide. It has been shown that the cost of tick eradication is only 

 about 50 cents a head, so that if the counties make a systematic cam- 

 paign to eradicate the tick, the increase in value of the hide alone 

 would pay for the cost of tick eradication and leave the farmer a 

 net profit of about 76 cents a hide. 



The shrinkage in the milk production of cattle harboring many 

 ticks will average 1 quart a day, and the loss occasioned thereby at 

 3 cents a quart for the 875,000 ticky dairy cattle out of more than 

 3,000,000 dairy cattle below the quarantine line would amount to 

 $26,250 a day, or, counting 300 milking days for each cow to the 

 year, $7,875,000 per annum. The damage resulting to the soutliern 

 purchaser of northern pure-bred or high-grade cattle is another item 

 of no small moment. About 10 per cent of all such cattle taken into 

 the South die of Texas fever, even after they are immunized by 

 blood inoculations, and about 60 per cent of them succumb to Texas 

 fever when not so treated. As they are usually very expensive ani- 

 mals and of a highly valued strain of blood, the loss in certain 

 cases is excessive and in othere almost irreparable, owing to the 



