194 
JAMES HARRISON. 
eat the weed and must be fed on good, nutritious food—food 
with laxative properties; sulphate of magnesium to correct the 
constipation, which is always present among locoed animals. 
Blackleg, or symptomatic anthrax in cattle, is another disease 
which I had a good deal of experience with, mostly in Texas 
and New Mexico. This is a disease which seems to prevail to 
an even greater extent in the extreme West—in the states of 
Washington, Montana, Oregon, Idaho, Utah, California and 
Arizona. It affects young animals, those between the ages of 
six months and two years—in fact it does not very often, if ever, 
affect an animal over two years old. There are certain pastures 
which seem to be impregnated with the bacillus and in which the 
disease appears regularly, spring and fall. Symptoms: The 
first thing the ranchman notices is that there is one or more of 
the herd are not feeding with the rest of the herd, appear dull 
and dumpy, lose all appetite and rumination ceases; are stiff and 
lame, perhaps, and the next thing he finds them laying dead on 
some part of the range. 
Treatment is preventive only, and that by vaccination with 
blackleg vaccine. I will not attempt to describe the mode of 
making or the different forms in which the vaccine is made, as 
I am simply giving you my experience in the Southwest. 
After preparing the vaccine and hypodermic and getting 
everything in readiness, the cattle are driven into the corral 
from one pen to another until the shute is reached, which holds 
five or six, one behind the other. The syringe is loaded with 
five doses and injected, one dose into each, under the skin in 
front of the shoulder. One man can vaccinate anywhere from 
five to eight hundred head a day if there are men enough to get 
them into the shutes. 
One great difficulty in the prevention of blackleg is that so 
many of the ranchmen cannot afford to lay out of the use of 
their pasture for two or three years to have it burned off, and 
that is one of the most effective ways of preventing the disease. 
Cattle tick and sheep mite are two other diseases which are 
uncommon in Michigan; these diseases,* however, do not come 
