8 



MISC. PUBLICATION 2, U. S. DEPT. OF AGRICULTURE 



If only wo could find and destroy all these tiny eggs laid in the 

 grass, we could keep the seed ticks from hatching out. But no one 

 can hope to iind all these tiny eggs that arc in a ticky pasture. 



The easiest and surest way to get rid of ticks is to kill them while 

 they are on the animal and before they have a chance to lay eggs 

 in the grass. 



Ticks can be killed on cows, steers, calves, and hoises by making 

 the animals swim through a dipping vnt full of a medicine which 

 kills the ticks. 



HOW TICKS KILL CATTLE 



The owner of the cow on which the ticks had been feeding saw 

 that slu' was getting sick. She was very thin and weak and feverish. 

 The (U)ctor looked at her. He said: "The cow is dying of tick 

 fever." Tick fever is also called redwater, murrain, and splenetic, 

 southern, or Texas fever. The cow got so weak it could not get up 



Kgg-laylng Uck and egga 

 tbat she has laid 



on its legs. At last it died in the pasture. Tlie cow had cost $40 

 and the owner lost all this monev- 



HOW CATTLE GET TICK FEVER 



Cattle get tick fever fioui being bitten l)y a fever tick, and in no 

 other way. They can not catch it from tiie air. nor the feed they 

 eat, nor the water they drink. They do not get it by being near 

 another animal which has the fever. 



No other kind of tick than the cattle-fever tick carries this fever. 

 The wood ticks which sometimes get on children and the ticks we 

 find on dogs, rabbits, chickens, turtles, and many other animals do 

 not carry tick fever. These other kinds of ticks sometimes get on 

 cattle and annoy them, but they do not and can not give tick fever 

 to the cattle. 



The fever tick carries cattle fever from a sick animal to a well 

 animal. It carries this disease much as certain kinds of mosquitoes 

 cany malaria or yellow fever from one human being to another. 



But the ticks do not carry this fever straight from a sick animal 

 to a well one. Once a tick has got on an animal it does not leave that 



