Pratt's Practical Pointers on the Care of Livestock and Poultry

by Pratt Food Company

Pratts Dip and Disinfectant

Put the hogs and pigs through the dipping vat and spray the quarters and feed receptacles occasionally with a strong solution of the original Pratts Dip and Disinfectant. Result—comfortable, vermin-free and disease-free hogs, less loss, more pork, more money.

There are other dips that look like the original Pratts, but they are not the same in efficiency. Refuse the substitutes. Use Pratts, the dip you can depend upon. It costs no more but it's worth more! You be the judge—

"Your Money Back If YOU Are Not Satisfied"

The quarters in which the sickness first appeared should be thoroughly cleaned, all bedding and rubbish burned, and loose boards and old partitions torn out and burned. If the pen is old, knock it to pieces and burn it. Disinfect pens and sleeping places using Pratts Dip and Disinfectant on the floors, walls and ceilings. Whitewash everything. If a hog dies from any cause, the carcass should never be exposed where it may be devoured by the other hogs or by passing birds or beasts, but should be burned at once or buried deeply and the pens thoroughly disinfected immediately. If possible, do not move the carcass from the place where it falls; but if this cannot be done the ground over which it is dragged should be disinfected. Hog-cholera bacilli can live in the ground for at least three months. Care must be taken to maintain an absolute quarantine between the sick and well hogs. The same attendant should not care for both lots unless he disinfects himself thoroughly after each visit to the infected hogs. Dogs should be confined until the disease is stamped out.

Treatment of hogs suffering from cholera or swine plague is not always satisfactory. The disease runs its course so rapidly that curative measures are more or less ineffectual, and prevention of an outbreak should be relied upon rather than the cure of sick animals. Pratts Hog Tonic has been successful in less virulent outbreaks when administered as soon as signs of sickness are shown.

Pratts Hog Tonic should be thoroughly mixed with the feed, which should be soft, made of bran and middlings, corn meal and middlings, corn meal and ground and sifted oats, or crushed wheat, mixed with hot water. If the hogs are too sick to come to the feed, the tonic should be given as a drench. Pull the cheek away from the teeth and pour the mixture in slowly. Care should be exercised, as hogs are easily suffocated by drenching. Do not turn a hog on its back to drench it.

Hogs often suffer very much from vermin. Lice are introduced from neighboring herds, and the losses in feeding are often severe, especially among young pigs, when death is sometimes a secondary if not an immediate result. When very numerous, lice are a very serious drain on vitality, fattening is prevented, and in case of exposure to disease the lousy hogs are much more liable to contract and succumb to it.

Newly purchased hogs should be carefully examined for vermin, and they should not be turned out with the herd until they are known to be free from these pests.

When the herd is found to be badly infested with lice all bedding should be burned and loose boards and partitions torn out. Old boards and rubbish should be burned. The quarters should then be thoroughly disinfected by spraying with Pratts Dip and Disinfectant.

Vermin are most common around the ears, inside the legs, and in the folds of the skin on the jowl sides and flanks. In light and isolated cases they may be destroyed by washing the hogs with Pratts Dip and Disinfectant, properly diluted, applied with a broom.

In severe cases, however, especially where the whole herd is affected, thorough spraying or dipping should be resorted to. In this case a dipping tank will be a great convenience.

Whenever any animals are brought to the farm, or when animals are brought home from shows or from neighboring farms, they should be kept apart from the rest of the herd for at least three weeks. If they have been exposed to hog cholera or swine plague the diseases will be manifested within this time, and the sick animals can be treated or killed and disposed of at once.

Galway, N.Y.

I bought two spring pigs the 15th of April and began feeding them Pratts Animal Regulator until the 15th of December when I butchered them. One weighed 415 pounds, the other 420 pounds. I know this Regulator does what you claim it to do.

BALDWIN O'BREY.

If cholera breaks out in the neighborhood the farmer should maintain a strict quarantine against the infected herds. He should refrain from visits to farms where they are located, and should insist on requiring that his neighbors stay out of his hog lots. Visiting of all kinds at this time should be carefully restricted. Dogs, cats, crows, and buzzards are very active carriers of infection from farm to farm, and should be guarded against as far as possible.