BANGE MANAGEMENT IN NEW MEXICO. 35 



Fenced inclosures also make possible the classification of the stock. 

 The steers may be taken out of the cow herd, thereby increasing to 

 some degree the fecundity. Young animals may be kept in pastures 

 containing only their own kind. Uniformity in the grading of the 

 animals makes them more attractive and more easily salable when 

 the buyer is inspecting them. It makes possible the weaning of the 

 calves at the proper age, which allows their mothers to recover flesh 

 while carrying their young. 



Quarantine and disease eradication. — The importance of a fence for 

 use in the control and eradication of various diseases that attack 

 range animals is excellently set forth in a petition 1 recently presented 

 to the President of the United States by those residents of south- 

 eastern New Mexico who are either directly or indirectly interested 

 in stock raising. It reads as follows: 



In addition to what has been said herein as to the manifest advantages of the indi- 

 vidual control of the range, it should be remembered that the splendid work which 

 has for the past twelve years been carried on by the Bureau of Animal Industry would 

 be very greatly facilitated. The officials of this department have done excellent and 

 efficient work in clearing this part of New Mexico of various infectious diseases to 

 which cattle and sheep are subject; but they have been greatly hampered and their 

 work delayed and made infinitely more expensive and difficult by the fact that there 

 has been no method whatever of isolating such infected herds as graze on the public 

 domain. It is practically impossible to thoroughly eradicate even the least virulent 

 of these diseases, such as scabies, pleuro-pneumonia, and anthrax, as long as the 

 diseased animals can not be permanently isolated from the healthy ones, which, with 

 herds running at large, is impossible. If under the present conditions of the range 

 such an infection as foot-and-mouth disease, which has appeared twice in the United 

 States in the past twelve years, should become distributed, the cattle industry would 

 be practically annihilated. It has been fully demonstrated in this and other districts 

 that where animals were under control in privately owned pastures, the eradication 

 of disease has been entirely practicable, while at the same time in contiguous open 

 ranges vast herds have perished as a result of these diseases, and their owners have 

 been practically ruined. 



Feeding range stock. — Very little feeding of range stock has been 

 done in New Mexico for any purpose whatever, and it is still a com- 

 mon practice to let animals die of starvation if there is not sufficient 

 feed on the range to maintain them. Aside from the humanitarian 

 argument, this is really very poor business, with meat at its present 

 price. 



Within the past decade a considerable area of the State has come 

 into cultivation by the development of various irrigation enterprises 

 or by dry-farming methods. In consequence, a much greater area 

 of land, previously some of the best grazing land of the State, has 

 ceased temporarily to be used for this purpose; but in all the dry- 

 farming area (where at present less than half the land is occupied, 



1 Written by ex-Governor Hagerman, of New Mexico. 



