The Harrison Times

The Cattle Tick Must Go.

Why eradicate the cattle ticks? Because it is easily done and will pay. Here are five reasons why it should be done, any one of which is of itself sufficient to justify the expense and trouble of doing the work:

First, they annoy our cattle and irritate the skin and suck blood enough to cause the cattle to require more feed and to put on less flesh or give less milk. The losses from this source alone during one year will eradicate the ticks and keep them off our cattle for all time.

Second, the quarantine placed on our cattle because of the presence of the ticks, causes our cattle to sell for at least one-quarter cent less per pound, whether sold to a neighbor, on the local market, or shipped. These losses in two years would pay for the eradication of the ticks.

Third, the ticks carry a germ that infects susceptible cattle with a disease that kills more cattle from May to December each year than die from all other diseases combined during that time. These losses alone in two years would pay for the eradication of the ticks.

Fourth, the presence of the ticks make the development of a cattle industry impossible, and without cattle our soils are kept poor. The losses from this cause alone, during one year, would more than pay for the eradication of the cattle ticks.

Fifth, since the ticks can be easily and cheaply killed, it is morally wrong to allow them to continue to annoy our cattle and destroy our property, which is needed for the building of a better agriculture and the education of our boys and girls.

It may seem strange to some that these ticks, that have been here so long, can be all killed with so little expense compared with the losses they cause but after a thing has been done thousands and thousands of times by ordinary people under similar conditions, and a total area larger than the states of Arkansas, Alabama and Mississippi combined has been freed of ticks, it is folly to longer doubt the practicability of doing the work.

Those who have ticks now on their cattle, even those, who favor getting rid of them and believe that they know the good that will come from so doing, do not appreciate one-tenth of the real benefits which will come from the eradication of the ticks. If they did, there would not be a tick alive in all this southland one year hence.