American Agriculturist, August 4,1923 
75 
Does Contagious Abortion 
Exist ? 
W. B. SUTTON 
S cientists have toia us that it 
does; that it is carried from one 
animal to another in breeding by means 
of a germ or microbe. 
Lately they have concluded that the 
germ or microbe has nothing to do 
with the disease. 
I have no desire to belittle the work 
of the scientists, but would call at¬ 
tention to a few things which they 
seem to have overlooked and which 
seem to me to indicate the cause of 
the disease. , 
Abortion may be caused by anything 
that will produce a weak or flabby con¬ 
dition of the abdomen. 
Intensive milk production is an un¬ 
natural condition, which in its very 
nature will produce such a condition. 
The cow under natural conditions 
gets about three months of lush feed, 
which makes a large flow of milk; then 
the grasses begin to ripen and become 
dry and constipating, with a conse¬ 
quent lessening of the milk flow. The 
dairyman seeks to avoid this by giving 
lush or loosening feeds the year round; 
if the cow will yield milk so long, the 
muscles become weak and abortion is 
the likely result. 
Another favorite practice of dairy¬ 
men is to breed heifers at the age of 
twelve to fifteen months, before they 
have attained anything like a full phy¬ 
sical development, thus putting upon 
the immature animal the further bur¬ 
den of reproduction, which has a further 
tendency toward a weakened condition 
of the muscles of reproduction. Preg¬ 
nant animals should have plenty of 
exercise to assist in strengthening all 
the body muscles; they should also have 
, muscle-building feed in abundance. 
A lawyer friend of mine bought a 
farm to show farmers how to make 
money. He built a large barn with 
water in each stall and stocked it with 
cows from the Hood farm, and when 
cold weather came shut them all up 
without a breath of pure air from out¬ 
side and fed them cut feed steamed 
over night, and they were petted and 
rubbed and curried to excess. Inside 
of two months they all sickened and 
died for lack of proper air, exercise, 
and possibly, food. 
Another friend told me of his experi¬ 
ence with chickens. He built a fine 
hen-parlor, plastering it and making it 
as air-tight as an expert carpenter 
could do it. 
Cold weather was already on when 
it was completed and he put in it two 
hundred fine May-hatched pullets which 
had already made their winter coats. 
The place was equipped with a stove 
and kept as nearly as possible to 70 
degrees. 
The pullets began to moult and all 
sickened and died. All this apropos of 
the fact that you cannot get very far 
away from Nature. 
If one cow became abortive from the 
result of such conditions as I have 
mentioned in the beginning of this ar¬ 
ticle, why might not many others do 
the same if in the same herd and sub¬ 
ject to the same conditions? Is it not 
more reasonable to suppose that it re¬ 
sulted from such conditions than from 
contagion? 
I have never heard of such a disease 
on the great ranges of the West. 
LIVE STOCK SALES DATES 
August 21-22—Belvidere Farm Jersey 
Sale, Belvidere, N. Y. 
August 25—Chenango County, N. Y., 
Guernsey Breeders’ Picnic and 
Field Day. 
August 25—Western New York Guern¬ 
sey Breeders’ Field Day, West- 
wood Farm, Springville, N. Y. 
August 30—Susquehanna Co., Pa. Hol¬ 
stein Breeders’ Second Annual 
Sale, Montrose, Pa. 
September 1—B. S. Bradford Holstein 
Dispersal Sale, Troy, Pa. 
September 1—Merridale Farms Jersey 
Sale, Meredith, N. Y. 
September 21—Eastern Aberdeen-An- 
gus Breeders’ Sale, Spring- 
field, Mass., F. W. Burnham, 
Secretary, Greenfield, Mass. 
September 26-27—Northern New York 
Holstein Breeders’ Sale, Water- 
town, N. Y. 
October 3-4—National Dairy Show 
Sale, Syracuse, N. Y. 
I*] is) 
m** 
. HOW TO BUY FEEDS 
The following is quoted from Page 61 of the L. A. Maynard 
new book “Better Dairy Farming” by Prof. E. S. Savage 
and Prof. L. A. Maynard. 
T HE object in buying feeds is to select 
those which at the least cost will form 
a satisfactory ration with the home-grown 
materials. By a satisfactory ration we mean 
one that will produce the maximum amount 
of milk. It must have adequate protein 
and be highly digestible. It must furnish 
the proper bulk and variety and be palatable. 
If we overlook them in trying to get a cheap 
ration, any money saved may be lost many 
times in lessened production. 
<n 
PROF. E. S. SAVAGE 
‘When a feed is taken into the body, a 
certain part is digested and absorbed while 
the remainder is excreted in the manure. Of 
course, only that part which is digested is of 
use to the animal; thus, in buying feeds we 
want to get the maximum amount of digest¬ 
ible material for our money. In fact, the 
only real way to tell what feeds are cheapest 
is to compare them on the basis of their 
digestible material. To do this we compute 
the total digestible nutrients of each feed ” 
Save Money on Your Feed Bill! 
Feed G. L. F. Rations—High in Digestible Nutrients 
The formulas of G. L. F. Rations are public so you can figure the cost of 
100 lbs. of digestible nutrients in each ration. You have the choice of Milk 
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G. L. F. Rations, manufactured by your own cooperative 
association, give you the greatest value for your dollar. 
They have great variety, are very palatable and are 
high in digestible nutrients. Feed them and you will 
get more milk cheaper and have a better cow left. 
For prices see your Local G. L. F. Agent or write 
Feed Department 
Cooperative G. L. F. Exchange 
Buffalo, N. Y. 
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