CHAPTER IV. 



ABORTION. 



This is an old trouble that dairymen have 

 had to contend with. Nearly forty years ago the 

 New York Legislature appropriated $10,000 to 

 be spent in trying to discover the cause of this 

 trouble. A commission was appointed and 

 after the members had completed their investi- 

 gation they said they did not know as much 

 about the cause of abortion as they thought 

 they did when they commenced the investigar 

 tion. We were many years in the dark as to 

 the cause of abortion, and I remember well my 

 surprise when informed that there was a con- 

 tagious form of the disease. 



Ctnita^ious Abortion. — ^I have had some ex- 

 perience with contagious abortion a,nd it was 

 very expensive indeed. The first season that it 

 appeared in my dairy I had sixty cows and 

 thirty-five of them aborted. This was many 

 years ago and as I did not know there was such 

 a disease I did not know what to do, and could 

 not find any one who did know, and conse- 

 quently I did nothing. This trouble followed 



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