Common Diseases of Farm Animals

by Robert Alexander Craig

The second, or furious stage, may last several days. Violent nervous or rabid symptoms are manifested, and the dog may leave home and travel long distances. The animal usually shows a strong inclination to bite. It may move about snapping at imaginary objects in its delirium, and may bite any person or animal with which it comes in contact. The bark is peculiar, the appetite is lost and the animal becomes weak and emaciated.

In the third, or paralytic stage, the dog may present an emaciated, dirty, ragged appearance. The lower jaw may drop, the tongue hangs from the lips and the eyes appear sunken and glassy. Paralysis of the hind parts may be present.

In the dumb form, the paralytic symptoms predominate and the disease pursues a short course. Rabies terminates in death in from four to ten days.

Furious rabies is more common in the horse. The animal is very nervous, restless and alert. It may attack other animals in a vicious manner, kicking and biting them. The animal does not seem to care to eat or drink, and usually shows violent nervous symptoms, such as biting the manger, rearing and kicking when confined in the stable.

Cattle butt with the horns and show a tendency to lick other animals. They bellow more than common and the sexual desire is increased. Paralytic symptoms are manifested early in the disease, and the animal may fall when moving about. They soon present a gaunt, emaciated appearance.

In dogs the diagnosis is confirmed by a microscopical examination of the vagus ganglia and that portion of the brain known as Amnion's horn, and the finding of Negri bodies in the nerve-cells. In case a person is bitten by a dog, the animal should be confined until the disease is well advanced and killed or allowed to die. The head should then be removed and forwarded to the State laboratory, or wherever such examinations are made.

The treatment is preventive. Wherever an outbreak of rabies occurs all dogs should be confined on the owner's premises or muzzled. All dogs running at large without muzzles should be promptly killed. A heavy tax on dogs, and the killing of all dogs not wearing a license tag, would prevent the heavy financial loss resulting from rabies, and the ravages of wandering dogs in the United States. In countries where the muzzling of dogs is enforced during the entire year, rabies is a rare disease.

FOOT-AND-MOUTH DISEASE.—This is a highly contagious and infectious disease of cattle, sheep, goats and swine. It is characterized by the eruption of vesicles on the mucous membrane lining the mouth, the lips, between and above the claws and in the region of the udder and perineum. Man may contract the disease by caring for sick animals; or by drinking raw milk from a sick cow. Babies are most susceptible to infection from milk.

Foot-and-mouth disease was introduced into eastern Europe from the steppes of Prussia and Asia near the end of the eighteenth century. It was introduced into England about 1839, and in 1870 into Canada through the importation of cattle from England. From Canada the disease spread to the United States. Very few animals were infected during the 1870 outbreak, and the disease was quickly stamped out in both countries.

Europe has been unable to eradicate foot-and-mouth disease. The different outbreaks that occur from time to time cause enormous financial loss. In the United States outbreaks of the disease have occurred in the following years: 1870, 1884, 1902-'03, 1908 and 1914-'15. In the first two outbreaks very few cattle contracted the disease, and the infection was quickly stamped out. The third and fourth outbreaks were more extensive, and it was necessary to slaughter several thousand cattle and hogs in order to eradicate the disease. The first four outbreaks occurred in the eastern States, and the disease was prevented from spreading to the principal live-stock centers of the country, and the leading stock-raising States by slaughtering the diseased and exposed animals and by county and State quarantines. Early in the 1914-'15 outbreak, the disease spread to the Chicago Stock Yards, and from there, through shipments of cattle, to the principal live-stock sections of the country. The financial loss resulting from this outbreak has amounted to several million dollars. The Federal and State authorities have always been successful in stamping out the disease in the United States.