24 BULLETIN 575, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 
time to get hold of them, with disastrous results. This has been 
very clearly shown in a case of Menziesia (laurel) poisoning, in 
which animals were bedded on a forest range for five nights in the 
same place; the animals were safe for the first two nights, but after 
that there was heavy loss. At the same time a band that was — 
wandering about without a herder in the same region was uninjured. 
It can not be too strongly impressed upon persons handling sheep 
upon the range that the sheep should be allowed to graze as far as — 
possible under strictly natural conditions. By this is meant that 
they should be allowed to go freely, separated from each other, 
moving slowly, and not allowed to graze over and over upon the 
same ground. The so-called blanket system of herding, which 
is advocated by the Forest Service, in addition to the fact that it 
aids in the conservation of the range, will also without any doubt 
reduce the losses from poisonous plants to a minimum, if it does not # 
entirely do away with them. 
CONCLUSION. 
In conclusion, it should be stated that, generally speaking, very 
little must be peered from medicinal Soho de to reduce the losses 
from poisonous plants. It is true that such remedies will help in the 
case of locoed animals and will save life in the case of larkspur poison- 
ing of cattle. Generally speaking, however, the reliance should be 
placed not in remedies, but upon prevention. Animals must be so © 
well cared for that they will not wish to eat poisonous plants. Some- 
thing may be done in the way of eradication, as was indicated under 
the discussion of larkspur. Larkspur can doubtless be eradicated 
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within a limited area. The locoes in pastures can be eradicated with 4 
very little difficulty, but upon the open range dependence must be 
placed upon avoidance rather than eradication. Zygadenus, too, does 
its harm upon the open range, and there it occurs in such large 
masses that eradication isimpossible. In the matter of Cicuta, farmers 
might, without doubt, accomplish much by digging it up along their 
irrigation ditches, and this practice is usual in a great many localities. 
But in the main the losses from poisonous plants must be prevented 
by careful handling of the herds, remembering always that animals 
are not likely to eat poisonous plants by preference, but that under 
starvation conditions they may be driven to the use of such material 
for forage with most disastrous results. 
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