THE TICKS WASTE PEED. 13 



The reason was that a large part of the feed she 

 was eating did not help her, but was wasted in feed- 

 ing the blood-sucking ticks. 



If these ticks had gotten on a steer, they would 

 have sucked blood from it that should have gone to 

 help it grow into a fine, heavy, fat beef animal. 



If the ticks had gotten on a calf, they would have 

 sucked so much blood from it that the calf could not 

 grow into a strong, healthy cow or steer. 



You can see that wherever there are ticks the cat- 

 tle owner will have less milk and butter and meat to 

 send to market. He will have to waste a lot of feed 

 in feeding ticks which do no good at all and hurt 

 or kill his stock. 



THE TICKS START A NEW FAMILY. 



The brown ticks and the egg-laying ticks kept on 

 sucking blood until they could eat no more. The 

 brown ticks ate a great deal, but they did not grow. 

 The egg-laying ticks became olive-green in color as 

 they grew fatter and fatter. 



The brown ticks at last dropped off the cow and 

 died. They had finished their short, but harmful, 

 lives. 



The olive-green, or egg-laying, ticks had used the 

 blood from the cow to grow fat themselves and also 

 to store up eggs in their bodies. When they had 

 eaten all the blood they could use, the egg-laying 

 ticks dropped off the cow into the grass. There, each 

 laid 4,000 to 5,000 eggs. Having started a new 

 blood-sucking family, the green ticks died. 



The eggs hatched into more hungry ticks to crawl 

 on the cattle and to suck more blood. 



