490 DISEASES OF CATTLE. 



mated 705,000 southern cattle, including stock, beef, and dairy ani- 

 mals, liiarketed yearly under these conditions will sum up a loss of 

 $1,057,500 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 four and a half millions of cattle east of the Mississippi River 

 and the eleven millions of cattle west of the Mississippi River; or, 

 altogether, the enormous shrinl?;age in value of $23,250,000 directly 

 chargeable to the cattle tick. This sum, however, should not be con- 

 sidered in determining the yearly devastation caused by the cattle 

 tick, but rather as an unnecessary reduction in the assets of the in- 

 fected country. This last loss does not include the decrease in flesh 

 and lack of development of southern cattle occasioned by the para- 

 sitic life of the ticks from without and by the blood-destroying and 

 enervating properties of the protozoan parasites from within, an 

 additional loss which is so very great that a conservative estimate 

 would place it equal to the loss above mentioned, or $23,250,000. 



The shrinkage in the milk production of cattle harboring many 

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

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

 4,000,000 dairy cattle below the quarantine line would amount to 

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

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

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

 blood inoculations, and about 60 per cent of these cattle succumb to 

 Texas fever when not so treated. Since they are usually very expen- 

 sive animals and of a highly valued strain of blood, the loss in 

 certain cases is excessive and in others almost irreparable, owing 

 to the possible extinction of some particular type especially selected 

 for the improvement of the herd. Thus of the approximate 4,600 

 of such cattle brought South each year, at least 460 die of Texas 

 fever. The loss entailed would naturally depend on the value of each 

 animal, and since the prices paid for such well-bred cattle range 

 from $100 to $1,000, or even more, it can readily be conceived that 

 the yearlr loss from this item alone varies from $46,000 upward. 



Another instance where it is difficult to figure the injury done by 

 the ticks is in the case of death of nonimmune cattle in the tick-free 

 pastures of the South. Such animals are as susceptible to Texas 

 fever as nonimmune northern cattle, and inasmuch as there are in 

 many States only one out of every four farms infested with ticks, the 

 cattle on the remaining farms will in many cases contract Texas 

 fever when exposed to the fever tick. These losses can scarcely be 



