136 BEEF PRODUCTION 



cur in calves between six and eighteen months of age. 

 It is not very common after two years of age and very 

 rare after three, but occasionally occurs in aged animals. 



The symptoms of the disease appear from one to 

 three days after infection has taken place, and are char- 

 acterized by a loss of appetite and rumination (chewing 

 the cud), dullness, and a high fever, the temperature 

 rising as high as 107°F. The disease is invariably 

 accompanied by a tumor or swelling on one or more of 

 the limbs, which causes lameness or stiffness. Some- 

 times the animal is stiff in the neck, all over, or in one 

 side of the body. These tumors or swellings under the 

 skin are the most important characteristic of the disease, 

 usually appearing a few hours after the constitutional 

 symptoms described above, but sometimes appearing 

 before. The tumors may appear on the thighs, neck, 

 shoulder, breast, flanks, or rump, but never below the 

 knee or hock joints. At first these tumors are small, 

 but they rapidly increase in size and become less painful, 

 and in a few hours the circulation is arrested and the 

 part becomes cold and painless. When stroked or 

 handled, a peculiar crackling sound is heard under the 

 skin due to gas formed as the bacteria multiply. When 

 cut into, a frothy, dark-red, disagreeably smelling fluid 

 is discharged. 



The animal invariably dies in from one to three days, 

 death being preceded by increasing weakness, difficult 

 breathing, and occasional attacks of violent convulsions. 

 After death the affected muscles look as if badly bruised 

 and filled with thick, dark blood and gases. The muscle 

 tissue is soft and easily torn. The features which dis- 

 tinguish the disease from anthrax are the unchanged 

 spleen and the ready clotting of the blood. In anthrax 

 the spleen is very much enlarged, the blood tarry, 

 coagulating freely. The anthrax carbuncles and swell- 

 ings differ from the blackleg swellings in not containing 

 gas, in being hard and solid, and in causing death less 

 rapidly. 



