People And Patriot

DISEASE IN FARM ANIMALS.

We should endeavor to prevent the appearance of disease, rather than to cure it after it has come. Sanitation, not medication, is what will reduce disease among farm animals to the minimum.

Disease is by far the more common among swine than among other farm animals in this country. Annually above ten per cent of our swine die of disease. Yet there are men who have raised swine extensively for fifteen to twenty years with as little disease among them as among the best-kept horses or cattle. These men have reared pure-bred swine, and some of them are in the region where corn is largely fed. It cannot, therefore, be said that so much disease among swine is due to in-breeding, or wholly to the large feeding of corn. There is no reason why swine should be more subject to disease than other farm animals. The fact that they are, is because they are treated differently. Their quarters are allowed to become more filthy; they are given drink that other animals would not be expected to use; their feed is thrown in the mud and their own manure; and their shelters are of the poorest description and devoid of all means of ventilation. The men who have raised swine with little disease have given their swine pure drink, a variety of clean, wholesome food, comfortable, well-ventilated shelter and clean, dry quarters.

It must not, however, be inferred that there is among other farm animals no more disease than there should be. If more care were taken to provide sheep, cattle and horses with only healthful food, drink, shelter and surroundings, it is safe to say that there would be much less disease among them. The investigations of European veterinaries, and of Drs. Law, Grant and others in this country, have shown that bovine tuberculosis is most prevalent among cows kept in damp, foul, unventilated stables, or upon wet land where the air and food are contaminated. In other words, sanitation and hygiene are opposed to bovine tuberculosis. Nor is this disease an exception. Sanitary measures are the best preventives of every disease afflicting our farm animals.

The preponderance of evidence is that swine-plague, bovine tuberculosis, foot-rot, glanders, etc., are produced by a microbe, although the germ theory of disease is disputed by some. However, it has been established without doubt that those conditions which are unwholesome to higher animal life are most favorable to the microbes which are supposed to produce these diseases. Thus, these microbes flourish in water contaminated with decaying organic matter, or in damp, decomposing litter; and while they are not introduced into the system through pure drink or food, they are introduced through foul, dirty drink and food oftener than by any other medium.

The measures recommended for the prevention of disease would also be desirable were no disease to be feared. It is firmly established that animals in low bodily condition are more subject to disease than vigorous, thrifty animals. That which makes the farm animal thrifty and vigorous, and therefore less liable to disease, also makes it profitable. The more wholesome the food, drink and surroundings of the animal, the stronger its appetite and the more thorough its digestion. It eats well, the exercise above the food of support is at the maximum, and as this measures the gain the profit is large. As digestion is vigorous the amount of food which escapes assimilation is reduced to the minimum.

Where "poor condition" is not allowed to exist, disease is scarcely known, and at the same time the animal makes the largest return for the food consumed.

While we have need for a hundred veterinaries to each one we now have, their work, as that of the physician of the human body, will be largely in teaching sanitation.—[American Agriculturist.