it BULLETIN 8} 
Loco. This is one of the bug-bears which lurks about the 
range country. I have never found a man who has seen enough 
of the progress of a case of locoed animal to be able to give a 
complete history of a single case. The history given is, U I turned 
a horse out one time and did not see him for several weeks. He 
then acted strangely. I saw him eating the loco plants and later 
he would eat nothing else. He became weak and emaciated and 
finally died.” 
I have seen a great many animals that were said to be locoed 
I have seen a few eating loco plants. I have also been, in a few 
cases, unsuccessful when attempting to make a “locoed” animal 
eat the loco plant. At one time we heard of a man who had 200 
steers, ninety-five per cent of which were said to be locoed. We 
spent sometime on that range and we could not find enough of 
either loco weeds or brown sage (which was also accused of caus¬ 
ing the trouble) to support an animal more than a few days. The 
loco plants growing in the pasture where quite a number (about 
fifty) of the locoed steers were confined, were mostly untouched by 
them. We saw a few plants which had been partially grazed off. 
I tried to feed green loco plants to a steer which was confined in a 
shed. He would not eat the weed, but ate corn and alfalfa hav 
with a relish. The range on which these steers were kept was a 
very poor range. There was very little grass which they could 
get. Later one steer which was badly affected when I was at the 
range the first time, died, and the bone of one hind leg was found 
to be decayed so that it broke with but a slight pressure. 
In every locality where loco was said to be prevalent I found 
the range to be very poor. This scarcity of food seems to go with 
loco outbreaks. I have often found a scarcity of loco plants as 
well as a scarcity of edible grass. At one place where I saw loco 
plants so thick that at a distance the patch showed but little else 
except those plants, the party using that range told me that his 
herd had never had a case of loco. 
I have noticed that there is more talk of loco when there is 
danger of new settlers coming in on the ranges occupied by old- 
time cattle men than at any other time. A “terrible outbreak” 
of this kind occurred just as the U. P. Land agents began to bring 
buyers into the country four years ago (in 1900). Some of the 
parties who talked the most about loco have since told me that 
the U. P. R. R. was getting to “thinking too much of their land 
and putting too high a valuation on it, so the old settlers there 
wanted to show the Railroad company that the land was not 
worth so much.” Others told me that an animal would not eat 
loco until it was almost starved to death. 
Such a variety of symptoms are described by different parties 
who describe locoed animals that it is possible that quite a num- 
