USA > Indiana > Jay County > The farm journal directory of Jay County, Indiana, 1916 > Part 28
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WHEEZING .- Horses often snort and wheeze because of an enlargement of the glands in the nostrils. A skilled veterinarian can remove the trouble by cutting it out. Doctoring will not cure snoring or wheezing horses. The air passages are stopped. Wheezing may also be caused by a form of asthma called Heaves (which see).
WIND GALLS OR PUFFS .- The treat- ment consists in pressure by means of bandages and by cold lotions; also, hand rubbing and iodine ointment.
WIND-SUCKING .- See Cribbing.
WORMS .- Horses having greedy appe- tites, rough coats and poor condition may be suspected of worms. Such ani- mals often pass long, round worms. Copperas or tobacco will clear the worms out of the stomach of a horse. A tablespoonful of copperas for two days and then stop for two. A handful of tobacco dried and made into powder and mixed with the grain. Give this for
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three days and then omit it for a few days. For worms in the rectum a syringe must be used. Salt and water are good; or, carbolic acid diluted fifty times in water; or, what is better, thymo-cresol, diluted one to fifty parts of water.
PUNCTURE .- It is dangerous for a horse to step on a nail, as it is likely to result in lockjaw. Have the black- smith cut out the puncture down to tender flesh, then fill the opening with a 5 per cent. solution of carbolic acid and pack with cotton to keep out dirt, and repeat daily, soaking the foot in clean warm water before dressing.
NAVICULAR DISEASE is indicated by a shrunken shoulder, and a contracted foot that is placed several inches in advance of the other while at rest. This is an inflammation or ulceration of the pedal sesamoid at the point where the tendons play over it. The symptoms are often very obscure, according to the stage of the disease, and the lameness is at- tributed to some difficulty in the shoul- der. This, however, is a mistake. It is due to the wasting of the shoulder muscles from disease. The cause is usually fast work on hard roads or pavements, causing slight inflammation, which being unnoticed or neglected, in- creases and ends in ulceration. The best treatment is to remove the shoe, pare down the hoofwall and round the edge to prevent splitting, then fire deeply in points around and above the coronet, follow up with one or more blisters of red iodide of mercury, one part, lard, three parts, and when the effects pass off, turn out the animal to pasture for six weeks. It is always best to con- stilt, in this disease, a competent veteri- nary surgeon.
CORNS originate in simple bruises. There is later an increased production
of hoof, and the formation of a horny tumor which presses on the quick. If of recent formation apply a bar shoe and rasp down the bearing surface of the afflicted heel and avoid pressure. Soak the feet. A horny tumor must be pared to the quick and packed with tar. Shoe with a bar shoe and place a leather sole between it and the hoof. If the corn be further advanced the foot should be soaked in a bucket of hot water for an hour, and then poulticed. Any matter that has formed should be liberated, and if grit or dirt has got into the heel this should be cleaned out. Poultices should be kept upon the wound until it is healed and free from soreness. If the cause is so serious that matter has burst out at the top of the heel, only a veterinary surgeon is competent to manage it.
THRUSH is a disease which shows an excessive secretion of unhealthy matter in the frog, and is detected by its vile odor. A common cause is foul stables. The cure consists in cleanliness and the removal of the cause. The diseased and ragged portions of the frog should be pared and scraped and the foot poulticed for a day or two with oil meal and water, to which may be added a few drops of carbolic acid, or some powdered charcoal. The dressing should be changed daily, and after every vestige of decayed substance is removed, the cleft of the frog and grooves on its edges should be cleaned and packed with oakum, held in place by leather nailed on with the shoe. Before packing, cover the place with a good coat of sulphate of zinc, pressing well in. Horses especially liable to thrush may need to be protected in the stable by the use of boots. Sometimes other diseases combine with thrush, making a cure seem impossible.
Dehorning Calves
Taking horns off yearling or older cat- tle is a hard shock to them. It costs a week's feed, and may cost much more. It is very easy to prevent the horns starting, requiring only thoughtful at- tention for a few minutes before the horns have come through the skin.
The following recipe has never failed : Procure common powdered concentrated lye, such as all housewives use. A 10- cent can will dehorn 100 calves. When the calf is a week or more old, before the horn has come through the skin, and when you can feel it in the shape of a little button under the skin, take
the calf in hand. Lay him gently on his side. Spit on the little bump and rub it in with your finger, till a place is wet as big as a silver quarter of a dollar. Don't wet anywhere else. Take your knife and lift out dry the powdered lye, as much as two grains of corn. Press it down on the wet place. It will stick there. Treat the other side in the same manner. Let the calf go. It won't hurt him much, or long. A scah forms; do not touch it. It will peel off after a time, and the hair will grow over the place; you will have a fine. smooth head, equal to a natural polled head.
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Hog Ailments and How to Treat Them
(From the Biggle Swine Book)
More has been spoken and written on the subject of hog cholera than upon any other one subject connected with hogs. It has ever been a fruitful source for discussion at farmers' in- stitutes and an endless theme on which to write. The Government has appro- priated large sums of money and has employed learned men who have la- bored with seeming diligence for years, and yet after all these years of waiting and all this expenditure of money we are forced to admit, whether humili- ating or not, that we know but very little that is of practical benefit about the whole matter.
But two things are absolutely known about the disease. One is that it sweeps unrestrained over vast areas of country, leaving death and destruction in its wake; and the other is that hogs which contract the disease usually die.
We shall not attempt to deal with this subject in a scientific way, but shall deal with it rather from a practical standpoint.
A somewhat recent means of preventing the disease is the serum or antitoxin cure. It consists in introducing into the system of the animal a serum which enables the body to more successfully combat the disease. The Government officials seem to be highly pleased with the results so far and seem to believe that relief from the dread disease is likely to come through this means. The serum produced last year, wherever used in cholera-infected herds, saved over eighty per cent. of the animals. It is easily applied, and its good effects in sick hogs are seen almost immediately.
Page after page has been written as a means of telling hog cholera, but much of it is difficult of comprehension to the average reader. If you have never had it in your herd you are to be congratu- lated on your good fortune; and if you ever do, when you are done with it you may not have as many hogs as you did before, but rest assured of one thing, and that is you will know hog cholera when you see it again. As a rule hogs do not look well for weeks before an attack. At other times it will come like a bolt of lightning from a clear blue sky. The first thing noticeable is a loss of appetite; the hair will look harsh and dry ; sometimes a slight cough will be noticeable, at other times not.
The disease is sometimes of slow devel- opment, at other times quite rapid. In- stead of the sprightly, rapid movement so characteristic of the young and grow- ing hog, he moves slowly and indiffer- ently ; he looks gaunt and tired; his back is arched, and he moves his hind legs with a dragging motion; his tem- perature will most likely be high, prob- ably from 104 to 108-the normal tem- perature of the hog is from 100 to 102. His bowels may be costive or the dis- charges may be thin and watery in sub- stance, but usually blach or dark in color, emitting an offensive odor peculiar to the disease.
The disease may be of a lingering character and the animals linger for weeks, or they may die in three of four days. Usually the lingering type is less fatal than the more rapid fornis of the disease. Hogs which discharge freely in the first stages of the disease are more likely to recover than when the bowels remain constipated. Dark blue spots will often appear under the skin. The bowels will be more or less inflamed inside; in the small intestines and sometimes in the stomach will be found ulcers; this, how- ever, is not common in the first stages of the disease. The bladder will most likely be full of a dark thick substance, show- ing that the kidneys, and in fact the whole internal organism, are affected.
If we were to say what we thought was the best thing that could possibly be done when cholera appears in a herd, we would unhesitatingly say, take the well hogs to clean new quarters where no hogs have been for years. Then if more of them take sick move them again, and it is our belief based on actual experi- ence that more can be accomplished in this way than by the use of all the medi- cine in the country. For various reasons it is not always possible to move hogs, and in that case treatment may be re- sorted to, sometimes with fairly good re- sults. The treatment should consist in separating the well from the sick hogs, and in dividing the sick hogs according to age and size and severity of the at- tack. Not more than four or five hogs should be in the same pen, and fewer would be still better. Feed but little, and let that be food which is easily digested. Use air-slacked lime and crude carbolic acid freely as a disinfectant. Use it both on the hogs and on the ground, in
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the sleeping places, on the fences and in the drinking vessels. As much depends on a thorough use of disinfectants as upon any other thing. If the bowels are constipated give something to move them. If too loose give something to check them. In short, use good common horse sense (so to speak) and you will usually suc- ceed very well. There is nothing better than salts or oil to move the bowels, and nothing shows better results in checking them than a few drops of crystal carbolic acid. We know of no food better, if indeed as good, for sick hogs than ship stuff, or middlings as it is sometimes called; it seems to digest easily and is soothing to the bowels.
If the weather is wet and cold keep the hogs dry and warm. In wet weather (if not too warm) keep the hogs in a floored pen, or at least in a pen where no water will lie in sinks or holes, as dirty water is one of the worst things a sick hog can possibly have. If the weather is warm, shelter the hog from heat. In other words, make him as comfortable as possible.
Let it be borne constantly in mind that much depends on good nursing. It would seem natural and reasonable that an animal afflicted as he is would do best if allowed plenty of fresh water to drink, but actual experience demonstrates that a greater number recover when the sup- ply of water is limited than when it is not.
Hogs that are very sick should be kept by themselves, as others seem to disturb them, and often their recovery depends on being perfectly still at the critical pe- riod of the disease. As a rule hogs that are too sick to eat die. All hogs that die of cholera, or of any other disease for the matter of that, should be burned and not buried, as abundant evidence can be produced to prove that the carcasses of hogs dying of cholera have been the cause of an outbreak years afterward. By all means burn all dead hogs as the only absolutely safe way of disposing of them. The burning operation is very simple. Lay the bodies across two logs, sticks or pieces of iron that will keep them up off the ground so that the fire can get under them, and the grease from their own bodies will usually do the work, with a little wood or corn cobs added occasionally.
Experience teaches that the disease more commonly appears in large herds than in small ones. The moral of this, then, is easily understood. Do not keep
hogs in large droves. Not over twenty- five or thirty hogs at most should long reinain together, and half the number would be infinitely better and safer in every way. Hogs of different sizes and ages should not be kept together, except- ing of course sows and suckling pigs. Hogs should not be kept on the same ground from year to year if it can pos- sibly be avoided. Plow up the lots and pens and cultivate them for a year or two; it will greatly assist in keeping your lots free from the germ. The dis- ease is much more prevalent in the sum- mer and fall months than in other sea- sons of the year. Then as far as is pos- sible reduce the number of hogs on the farm at this season of the year.
If your neighbor's hogs have the dis- ease, stay away from his pens and be sure he stays away from yours. Shoot a crow, a buzzard, or a stray dog that comes on your place as unhesitatingly as you would kill a mad dog. This trio does more to scatter the disease than all the other causes combined. If your hogs are fit or any way near fit to go to mar- ket when the disease makes its appear- ance in the neighborhood, sell them with- out delay. "A bird in hand is worth two in a bush." If your hogs have chol- era this year, don't get discouraged and quit, but try it again, on fresh ground.
If your brood sows have passed through the cholera. keep them; they are valuable. They will never again have the disease, and their pigs are not nearly so apt to contract it as pigs from sows that have not had the disease. Look out for streams which come down from some neighbor above you. This has been found a frequent cause of cholera out- breaks. The germs of hog cholera pos- sess great vitality, and will live in the soil, in moist matter and especially in water, for months.
If you feed corn, rake the cobs to- gether often and burn them; pour water on the coals and then put salt on the charcoal thus made and you have an excellent preventive for diseases, with little or no cost. Keep your hogs, ex- cepting brood sows, ready for market. It may come handy some day. Strong, vigorous hogs are less liable to contract the disease than hogs of less strength and vigor. Then breed and feed for both these things. Eternal vigilance in hog breeding, as in other kinds of busi- ness, is the price of success.
Here is a formula for the treatment of hog cholera that is probably as good as
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any, which is not saying much. It is suggested by the Department of Agri- culture :
Sulphur 1 pound.
Wood charcoal. 1 pound.
Sodium chloride. 2 pounds.
Sodium bicarbonate. .2 pounds. Sodium hyposulphite .. 2 pounds.
Sodium sulphate .. .1 pound.
Antimony sulphide .... 1 pound.
Thoroughly mix and give a large table- spoonful to each 200-pound hog, once a day. If the animal does not eat, add the medicine to a little water, thoroughly shake and give from a bottle by the mouth. If the animal will eat, mix the medicine with sloppy food. The same remedy is recommended as a preventive to those animals that do not as yet show signs of disease.
If you have had cholera on your place, and you have small, inexpensive pens, burn them at once. In a piggery, burn all the litter and loose inexpensive parts ; renew the floor, if possible, and disinfect the remainder by washing it with hot water and washing soda. After wash- ing, apply with a whitewash brush, or better yet a spray pump, a solution of one part of carbolic acid to fifty parts of water. Then thoroughly whitewash. Treat the fences in the same way. Earth floors should be removed to a depth of at least six inches and the ground sprin- kled with chloride of lime and a few days later a good coating of air-slacked lime. Don't put pigs in the quarters for at least six months, and, if possible, have them vacant over the first winter.
An Ohio breeder of large experience, in the Miami valley, where hog cholera first appeared in 1856 and has recurred at frequent intervals, holds that drugs, virus and antitoxin have all been fairly tried sundry times by him and his neigh- bors. He believes that prevention will do more to hold in check the plague than drugs and hypodermic infusions. The most important help to prevent spread of disease is not to allow the hog farm to become infected with the excrement of diseased hogs. This can be done by quarantining the herd in a field, that is to be put under cultivation the following year. This quarantine must be estab- lished as soon as the first pig is taken sick. If the disease is in the neighbor- hood, carefully watch for first symptoms of disorder. Do not wait until several are sick and scouring, for this excre- ment is loaded with germs of disease, and these germs may retain vitality many
months when covered in the corners ot pens, or filth of yards, or about an old straw stack; but when exposed to sun- light or dryness they lose vitality in a few days, and under some very drying sunlight conditions in a few hours. Care- fully observing these facts,' he has in forty years been clear of hog cholera the year following an attack, and on un- til the disease has become epidemic in his neighborhood. After the herd has been placed in quarantine away from the permanent hog houses, lots and feeding floors, he kills and burns, or buries five feet deep, each animal as soon as it shows distinct symptoms of disease. They are burned or buried beside the quarantine, and in the field to be cul- tivated the following year. It requires nerve to kill breeding stock of great value, but they are as liable to spread and entail disease as any other, when once attacked.
If, by any means, we can prevent spread of germs, by so much do we hold the disease in check. A farm, with its feed lots and pens and shelters infected by the excrement of the diseased, be- comes as deadly a centre as the public stock-yards and filthy stock cars on the railroads, and these are so thoroughly infected that we can never safely take stock hogs from these to our farms. This is not theory, but well proven fact.
Pig ailments are numerous; we shall speak only of some of the most common.
It is always best to give medicines mixed with food or drink where possible. If the animal refuses food or drink and it is necessary to administer drugs, it may be done by placing a stout chain (an ordinary harness breast chain does very well) within the mouth and well back between the jaws, which are thus kept from crushing the bottle. Two or three men are necessary for the undertaking. one or two to hold the chain and one to pour the medicine. The head should be well elevated, which places the pig on his haunches. Do not pour the medicine fast enough to strangle the animal.
Hogs will not do well when the skin is covered with filth. Bad air will bring on coughs; all corn for food, fever; a wet bed, rheumatism; and a big bunch together will breed disease. With a clean skin, good air, a variety of food, a dry bed and a few together, and lots of out- of-doors, they will do well.
When at pasture they find many roots, nuts and pebbles, besides being continu- ally active, which does more than food
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for their hearty health, rapid and easy digestion and speedy, profitable growth.
THUMPS .- This disease is quite com- mon (especially in the early spring) and is exceedingly hard to handle when once contracted. More can be done to prevent than to cure. You visit the sow and lit- ter in the morning to give them their accustomed feed, and you notice that one of the fattest and plumpest ones does not leave his bed as do the others. You en- ter the sleeping room and compel him to come out, which he does somewhat reluctantly, and you will notice that his sides move with a peculiar jerking mo- tion, and if allowed he will soon return to his bed. Rest assured he has thumps, and nine chances to one he will die. It is caused by fatty accumulations about the breast, which interfere with its ac- tion, and the lungs work hard-pump for dear life to keep up the heart's action- to send the blood through the body. The pig is faint because of feeble circulation, and he is cold, and soon dies from ex- haustion or weakness. He has no strength to suck or move.
Thumps rarely occurs among pigs far- rowed after the weather is fine, but does quite frequently occur among pigs far- rowed in early spring. If the weather is cold and stormy and the sow and litter keep their bed much, then be on the look- out for thumps. Guard against it by compelling both sow and litter to exer- cise in the open air. CANKEROUS SORE MOUTH is a disease which is quite common and which if not promptly taken in hand is often quite fatal. When pigs are from a few days to two weeks old, you may notice a slight swelling of the lips or a sniffling in the nose. An examination will show a whitish spongy growth on the sides of the mouth just inside the lips or around the teeth. This is cankerous sore mouth. and if not taken promptly in hand will result in the death of the entire litter, and will sometimes spread to other litters. Some claim the disease is caused by damp and filthy beds, others say it comes from a diseased condition of the sow, and still others claim it is caused by the little pigs fighting over the teats and wounding each other with their sharp teeth, and stoutly aver that if the teeth are promptly removed no case of sore mouth will ever occur. Hold the pig firmly and with a knife or some cutting instrument remove all the spongy foreign growth, and be sure you get it all even though the pig may squeal and the wound bleed; your suc- cess in treating the disease will depend largely on the thoroughness with which you remove this foreign growth. After removing the fungous growth apply an ointment made of glycerine and carbolic acid in about the proportion of one part of the acid to from five to eight parts glycerine. Repeat this each day for three or four days and the disease will usually yield. You may discover in a day or two after commencing treatment that you did not succeed in removing all the cankerous growth at first, and if so, repeat the cutting operation till you do remove it all. Another treatment which we have heard recommended is to catch the dis- eased pig and dip his nose and mouth up to his eyes in chlora naptholeum with- out diluting it. This is certainly easily done and is highly commended by the person suggesting it. BLIND STAGGERS, INDIGESTION, SICK STOMACH, FOUNDER .- Causes, over-feed- ing, especially common with new corn; sour or decayed food. Sudden warm sultry weather predisposes in highly fed hogs. Insufficient exercise is also a pre- disposing cause. Symptoms .- Loss of appetite, bowels constipated, or maybe diarrhoea. In some severe cases blind staggers and great paleness of mouth and nose, cold- ness of surface of body; abdomen may be distended and drum-like from con- tained gases. Treatment .- Remove sick animals, pro- vide clean, dry, well ventilated quarters. with chance for exercise, and fresh earth and water. If animal will eat, give light feed. Give charcoal in lump form, also mix soda bicarbonate in food at rate of two tablespoonfuls per day to each half-grown animal. It is rarely neces- sary to drench with medicine. If recov- ery begins, use care not to again feed too much. MILK FEVER occurs in sows immedi- ately after farrowing or within the first few days afterwards. The symptoms are loss of milk, swollen, hard condition of the milk glands, which are more or less painful on pressure. Sow may not allow the pigs to suck; she may lie flat on her 233 JAY COUNTY belly or stand up, and in extreme cases the sow has spells of delirium, in which she may destroy her young. Cause .- Injudicious feeding, overfeed- ing on milk-producing foods. Do not feed sow quite full rations for few days just before and after farrowing. Treatment .- Give sow plenty of cool .clean water; bathe the swollen glands for half hour at a time with water as warm as she will bear, dry thoroughly with soft cloth and give good dry pen. If bowels seem constipated give the sow internally one-half pint pure linseed oil. (Never use the boiled linseed oil used by painters; it is poisonous.) If the sow starts killing her young, or has no milk for them, it is best to take most of them, or all, away from her and feed by hand with spoon or ordinary rubber nipple and bottle. For this use one part boiled water and three parts cow's milk. The pigs may be returned to the sow if her milk returns. Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.