LOCO DISEASE.
—The word loco is a Spanish word, and means crazy. Loco disease is a disease of the brain and nervous system, especially of horses and cattle, but may also affect other animals. It results from eating any one of a number of poisonous plants called loco which grow upon the dry, sandy prairies of some parts of the Western United States.
In winter and early spring, when there is little or no grass, some animals acquire an appetite for this plant, and soon refuse all other kinds of food. When addicted to the weed an animal loses flesh rapidly, the eyesight becomes affected—often it has no knowledge of distance—and frequently when made to step over a board or rail will jump over it as though it were several feet high. Later, in the course of the disease, the brain becomes more affected and the animal acts more or less crazy, at times quite violent, at others depressed and dull.
Should the animal live through the first attack it may linger for months or even years, but it usually dies as a result of the attack. Frequently some peculiar “foolish” habit follows the animals through life. Some have a nervous fit when excited or warmed up, others will not lead and some you cannot drive at all. There is no cure for the trouble. All that can be done is to prevent the habit from being formed or by removing the animal from temptation and furnishing wholesome, nutritious food.