VETERINARY PRACTICE ON THE RANGES OF TEXAS. 
193 
rancher was compelled to pass up (for a great many of them do 
their own castrating). A few dead ones did not make much 
difference, but this condition is changing very fast. It was only 
a few years ago when the ranchman was compelled to do his 
own veterinary work if there w'as any done. As a veterinarian 
could not be found within hundreds of miles, consequently, if 
a horse took sick, he lived or died just as nature willed—and, 
as I said before, a few dead ones cut no figure; but that was at 
a time when horses, mostly of the broncho type, were worth from 
five to twenty-five dollars a head, but things have changed in 
the last few years; horses are a good price, and the ranchman 
has found out that in order to get the top price he must raise 
a different class of horses. The broncho is all right for the 
saddle, makes an Ai cow horse, and the proper thing to round 
up his cattle, but he will not sell on the market; consequently., 
they are buying the best type of Percheron, Clyde, Belgium or 
coach stud that they can find and turning in with their best 
mares. Then, again, people going from the North and Middle 
West States usually take good horses with them and, if mares, 
they usually raise a colt or two, although most of them taken 
from the North or Middle West die within a year or two, or a 
few years at most. But I am wandering from the subject. 
There are some diseases in the Southwest that we of the 
Middle West States rarely come in contact with, such as loco 
poisoning. The word “ loco,” taken from the Spanish, meaning 
crazy, has been applied for a great many years to a disease of 
stock and sheep in the semi-arid region of the West. The name 
loco weed has been applied to a large number of plants, but the 
Astragalus lamberti and Astragalus mollissimus are the principal 
ones which poison horses, sheep and cattle; the latter, however, 
seldom poisons cattle because they very rarely eat it. 
I had considerable experience with this disease, but time and 
space will not permit me to enter into a full discussion of it, as 
that would make a lengthy paper of itself. The treatment, how¬ 
ever, consists of strychnine for cattle, Fowler’s solution for 
horses; they must be taken from the pasture so that they cannot 
