HOG CHOLERA AND SWINE PLAGUE. 221 



for themselves, under such conditions of exposure, the mortality 

 is apt to be very high. 



It is apparently useless to spend money on medicines in the 

 treatment of either of these diseases. Before giving" credit to pat- 

 ent medicines, one should bear in mind that outbreaks often check- 

 suddenly without any treatment. 



Experience demonstrates that it is desirable to separate the 

 well from the sick animals promptly, and to place the well in un- 

 infected sheds, pens or yards. It is also desirable to keep both 

 the pens where the sick and the healthy hogs are confined, thor- 

 oughly cleaned and disinfected. For this purpose, unslaked lime 

 is quite satisfactory, and it is easily applied. 



The manure should be kept in compact piles outside of the 

 pens, and disinfected layer by layer with lime, or corrosive sub- 

 limate dissolved in water, in the proportion of 7.5 grains to the 

 pint. Lime should also be scattered freely over the floor of the 

 pens. 



Common mistakes. — It is a mistake to bury hogs that have 

 died of hog cholera or swine plague when the carcasses can be 

 burned, for burning is by far the most efficient means of destroy- 

 ing the germs of these diseases. If it is not convenient to burn 

 the carcasses, they should be buried under at least four feet of 

 earth. 



It is a mistake, and frequently a serious one, for a farmer to 

 ship in a lot of strange hogs from unknown stockyards, in cars 

 that may have been infected, to his own farm, and to put these 

 with stock hogs already on hand. The mere fact that the hogs 

 came from an uninfected district is no argument to the contrary, 

 for the car in which they were shipped may have recently carried 

 a lot of hog cholera victims. Strange hogs should be quarantined 

 for three weeks before putting them with hogs already on 

 the place. This gives time for the disease to appear in case the 

 new hogs have come from infected herds, or through infected 

 stockyards, or in infected cars. 



It is a mistake to visit your neighbor's hog pens, and walk 

 about among the hogs out of mere curiosity, when your neighbor 

 has told you that some peculiar sickness has appeared in his herd. 



It is a mistake to allow the last one or two sick hogs, which 

 usually show a verv chronic type of the disease, to linger for 



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