Grant County herald. [volume] (Lancaster, Wis.) 1850-1968, 1882-12-14

HANDLING HOG CHOLERA.
How to Get Rid Of this Pestilence When 1t Makes
It's Appearance in the DroFes.

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Prof. Henry makes the following re-
ply to a letter addressed to him as to the
best measures for stamping out hog
cholera.
GRANT COUNTY HERALD:-Absence
from home has prevented al earlier
reply to your inquiry relative to hog
cholera.
| a be of but little help to your
people | am certain, for in my opinion
there are no remedies for really sick
hogs that are worth time and trouble OF
trying.
The only points worth considering are
the prevention of the disease from
spreading in neighborhoods where It is
now located, and Kidding individual
farms from the plague.
Let me speak of the latter first. What
should the farmer do who has the dis
ease already in his herd of swine. BY
all means would say adopt what might
be called the ''heroic method of treat
ment.H This would be to kill and burn
every diseased hog on the farm. If
there are any that are recovering from
the disease let them either be put to
death or put into pens at some distance
from the hogs that are free from the
disease. Put the well hogs by them
selves and build cheap pens out in a
field, away some distance from where
sick hogs have ever been. Ii there arc
old straw stacks about which sick hogs
have lain, let them be removed and
burned. Do not allow the men who
have helped work about diseased or
dead hogs or the quarters where they
have been have any care of the well
ones or go neal them. The new quar-
tiers should be 10 far away from the
inoculated hogs or old pens that rats
and mice could not easily run back and
forth. Pursue this plan rapidly until
spring. Then put the well animals into
fields in which no sick animals have
been allowed for a year at least. BY
fall all will probably be safe so that the
hogs may be put into their old quarters.
OF curse these old pens should be
cleaned and washed at once and all the
manure, bedding, etc., be drawn away
SO that they can have several months
for publication. | talked with an Ohio
farmer this fall who pursued the above
plan nine years ago when the disease
first came into his neighborhood. He
only lost hogs n season and has been
free from the disease from that day to
this while his neighbor who tried reLle-
dies, scattering his sick hogs over the
fields thinking that separation would
help them has lost hogs annually to this
day.
Remember to keep the disease in as
small quarters as possible. Don't waste
time and money on medicines or sick
hogs, it wont pay in the end. Don't
think there are breeds of cholera proof
hogs. Begin at once to fight the disease
and to get rid of it by natural means.
When the disease appears in a neighbor.
hood let the farmers hold ameeting and
talk the matter up and agree on some
measures that will check it at once. II
will pay them well to buy up the sick
hogs of the contrary ones who will dc
nothing and then kill them.
If railroads can pool their earnings
and corporations combine to increase
their profits, | should like to know why
farmers cannot combine to stamp out
the disease. Half way measures are
worse than useless. In a pork-raising
county like Grant county the immediate
putting to death of every hog that is
diseased or has been exposed would pay
n hundred percent on the investment
in q years time.
Our farmers should remember that
not only hogs can convey and com
municate the disease but that rats, sheep.
men, strawstacks, hog manure bedding
etc, are all capable of the same effect
and that the disease does not break out
spontaneously.
Past experience shows that our farm
ers viii not heed such advice as l have
given only in a small way and that they
will try all kinds of remedies and lose
ten times as much in the end. When
we a do as good business men in The
cities would do in such emergencies hog
cholera will not spread as much as small
poX does nowadays.
w. A. HENRY.
Prof. of Ag'l State University