ULCERATIVE ANO- VULVITIS. 



This affection was recorded as prevailing in Iowa, Missouri, 

 Kansas and Nebraska in 1897-8, and again in Iowa in 1900-1. 



Causes. From the lesions Mohler has isolated a long rod 

 shaped microbe which he identified with bacillus necrophorus of 

 foot-rot. He has even taken the microbe from hog cholera 

 ulcers and successfully inoculated it in the vulva of a healthy- 

 heifer. There remains, however, the difficulty that this disease 

 prevails in one genus only, attacking but one system of organs, 

 proving infectious along this narrow line, and respecting pigs, 

 sheep and other animals living in the same yard or field. If it 

 is the same microbe which operates specifically in omphalitis, 

 foot-rot and hog cholera it has apparently taken on new patho- 

 genic potencies and parted with many that it shows prominently 

 under other circumstances. 



The appearance of the disease in isolated herds which have 

 had no known communication with other herds, and even in the 

 young nonbreeding cattle to the exclusion of older ones, suggests 

 an enzootic origin perhaps connected with microbian growths 

 outside the animal body and the introduction of the microbes or 

 toxins, in food, water or otherwise. Mediate contact through a 

 bull serving in an affected and sound herd in succession has failed 

 to convey the disease. 



On the Rodkey farm at Blue Rapids, Marshall county, Kan., 

 eight heifers from ten to fourteen months old, suffered, while the 

 seventeen steers of the same age and the milch cows escaped. 

 (Steddom). Near Shelby, la., a bull, from a healthy herd, 

 broke into an affected herd and served cows there, and was after- 

 ward returned to his own herd and served cows there, but did 

 not communicate the disease. (S. T. Miller) No case is re- 

 corded to show that any bull serving affected cows or heifers con- 

 tracted ulcers or other diseases of sheath or penis. 



In one herd near Shelby, la. , nineteen head of cows and heif- 

 ers suffered, while the four steers in the herd escaped. In an- 

 other herd of twenty-six head, in the same district, the four cows 

 and eight of the twenty-two steers suffered. It is not therefore, 

 confined to the females. (S. T.Miller). 

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