SF .0,6 '( .^ /3. L-'L^U'. ,r ' /J'O^LLytC^a^^- OlX ^hUjL. /"^ t-1-^^ /u^r 11 III liilii lilpi ill III iiittiiiiij i^iil; THE STORY OF THE CATTLE FEVER TICK What Every Southern Child Should Know About Cattle Ticks WASHINGTON GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE 1917 THE STORY OF THE CATTLE FEVER TICK What Every Southern Child Should Know About Cattle Ticks A picture book which shows how the fever ticks steal milk, meat and money from farmers and kill thousands of their cattle t^K »( c^ v; U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE WASHINGTON, D. C. 1917 SFsoB" 0. of D. DEC 22 1917 U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE WASHINGTON, D. C. October 1, 1917. Dear School Childrex of the South: I know that you do not like to have cows and steers and calves get sick and die. \Mien a cow dies there is less milk and when a steer dies there is less meat, and we all like milk and butter and meat with our meals. We all like to see fat, healthy cattle grazing in the country. You can help to keep cattle from getting sick and dying by reading this story book and then getting your parents to fight cattle fever ticks in your county. For most of the cattle that die of sickness in the South die l)ecause they have been bitten by cattle fever ticks. These ticks carry tick fever from a sick animal to a well one. This sickness is sometimes called redwater, or murrain. Some animals bitten by ticks do not die, but every year fever ticks kill thousands of cattle that ought to be givmg milk or become meat at the batcher's. This stor}' book tells you how to get rid of these robber ticks. In many comities people have gotten rid of fever ticks by building dipping vats and making their cattle swim through a medicine that kills ticks. These people have freed their stock from tick fever and now are sending to market all the milk and meat that the ticks used to steal. They are turnmg feed into valuable food instead of into worthless ticks. Get your father and mother to read this story. I hope that you and your friends will enjoy this little book. Very truly, yours. Chief, Bureau of Animal Industry. 3 THE STORY OF THE CATTLE FEVER TICK. ONE warm summer day an olive-green cattle fever tick laid 4,000 tiny eggs in the grass on a southern farm. These eggs were waxy brown in color and were not much larger than a turnip seed. Here is a picture of the tiny eggs: Tick eggs under magnify- ing glass. These little eggs were kept warm by the sun. In less than a month they hatched out into lively, hungry seed ticks. Each seed tick was smaller than the head of a pin. If you had looked at these ticks 5 THE CATTLK FEVER TICK. through a magnifying glass, you would have seen that they had six legs. Cattle fever s^ed ticks. Count the lees. These tiny seed ticks were very hungiy. They wanted to get some blood from a cow or steer or calf. Blood is the only food they can eat. ' The hungry baby ticks crawled to the tips of the grass and to the tops of weeds and bushes. They waited there for an animal to pass by. This picture shows the baby ticks on the grass lying in wait for a cow or calf or steer. Cattle fever seed ticks on grass. THE TI( KS GET ON A COW A COW walked slowh' b}^ the spot where the little ticks were hiding. The ticks smelled blood and got ready to get on the cow. Many of the seed ticks were able to get on her tail or her neck or her legs. Eveiy baby tick on the cow began to hunt for a thin place in her hide. As soon as each tick had found a tender spot, it began to bury its head in the hide. It was digging a tiny well to the blood in the cow. Here are seed ticks driving their little wells to the blood in the cow : ^\i(S ^^Hf"^ When the baby ticks got their first taste of blood, they began to suck blood as fast as they could. Eveiy day they grew a little larger. They sucked blood and grew for about a week. Then they shed their skins, which is called molting, and became little 8-legged ticks. THE CATTLE FEVEU TICK. Cattle fever ticks after first molt. Count the legs. The little 8-legged ticks sucked blood again and kept on growing until they changed or molted a second time. After the second molt they looked like this: Female, or egg-laying, cattle fever tick after second moU. THE TICKS SPOIL LEATHER. After this second change some of the ticks had become brown male ticks. The others had become egg-laying ticks. The egg-laying ticks at first were not much larger than the brown male ticks. The brown male ticks did not grow any more. But the egg-laying ticks grew larger and larger, and the larger they grew, the more blood they sucked from the cow. They made bigger wells in the hide so that they could get blood faster. Each of these wells or tick bites makes a sore spot and a mark in the leather made from the hide. (See illustrations on page 10.) The egg-laying ticks got so big and fat that they looked like tiny blood sausages, or little balloons. Each tick kept itself full of blood all the time. If you had crushed one of them, you would have seen the blood in it. The male ticks stay brown, but the egg-laying ticks, when they are fat, are olive-green. The big, olive-green, egg-laying ticks look like this : Full-<;rown egg-laying tick under ma<::nifving glass. The ticks sucked so much blood that the cow became thin and scrawny. The cow was making blood out of feed as fast as she could. But she could not make blood fast enough to feed the ticks and at the same time keep well and strong and fat herself. 8227°— 17 2 10 THE CATTLE FEVER TICK. Leather made fi-om a hide not bitten by ticks. 'S!c*P&i^ Poor, rough leather from a tick-bitten hide. You can see why a tick-bitten hide is worth 75 cents to $1.50 less than one not full of tick holes "and spots. THE TICKS STEAL MILK. 11 The ticks got a lot of the blood that the milk cells of the udder needed for making milk. The cow's milk fell off nearly two quarts a day. Ticks steal milk. Many ticks on a cow may reduce her milk two quarts a day. The ticks also got a lot of the blood that should have gone into meat and fat on the cow. She was so thin that the butcher would not buy her to kill for meat. Her owner wondered why she ate so much costl}^ feed and gave so little milk and did not grow fat. The lever ticks li 111- \' It III i I M 1 1 1 : ig much of her feed into milk and flesh. 12 THE CATTLE TEAEU TICK. This steer was not sucked thin by ticks. All his feed went to make beef and fat and bone. This steer had to feed ticks as well as himself. His feed went largely to fatten ticks. Which steer would you choose if you were the butcher? THE TICKS WASTE FEED. 13 The reason was that a large part of the feed she was eating did not help her, but was wasted in feed- ing the blood-sucking ticks. If these ticks had gotten on a steer, the}^ would have sucked blood from it that should have gone to help it grow into a fine, heavy, fat beef animal. If the ticks had gotten on a calf, they would have sucked so much blood from it that the calf could not grow into a strong, healthy cow or steer. You can see that wherever there are ticks the cat- tle owner will have less milk and butter and meat to send to market. He will have to waste a lot of feed in feeding ticks which do no good at all and hurt or kill his stock. THE TICKS START A NEW FAMILY. The brown ticks and the egg-laying ticks kept on sucking blood until they could eat no more. The brown ticks ate a great deal, but they did not grow. The egg-laying ticks became olive-green in color as they grew fatter and fatter. The brown ticks at last dropped off the cow and died. They had finished their short, but harmful, lives. The olive-green, or egg-laying, ticks had used the blood from the cow to grow fat themselves and also to store up eggs in their bodies.. When the}' had eaten all the blood they could use, the egg-laj'ing ticks dropped off the cow into the grass. There, each laid 4,000 to 5,000 eggs. Having started a new blood-sucking family, the green ticks died. The eggs hatched into more hungry ticks to crawl on the cattle and to suck more blood. 14 THE CATTLE FEVER TICK. If only we could find and destroy all these tiny eggs laid in the grass, we could keep the seed ticks from hatching out. But no one can hope to find all these tiny eggs that are in a ticky pasture. Egg-laying tick and eggs that she lias laid. The easiest and surest way to get rid of ticks is to kill them while they are on the animal and before they have a chance to lay eggs in the grass. Ticks can be killed on cows, steers, calves, and horses by making the animals swim through a dip- ping vat full of a medicine which kills the ticks. HOW TICKS KILL CATTLE. The owner of the cow on which the ticks had been feeding saw that she was getting sick. She was very thin and weak and feverish. The doctor looked at her. He said: '^The cow is dying of tick fever." Tick fever is also called redwater, murrain, and splenetic fever. The cow got so weak it could not get up on its legs. At last it died in the pasture. The cow had cost $40, and the owner lost all this money. THE TICKS CARRY TEVER. 15 HOW CATTLE GET TICK FEVER. Cattle get tick fever from being bitten by a fever tick, and in no other way. They can not catch it from, the air, nor the feed they eat, nor the water they drink. They do not get it by being near another animal which has the fever. No other kind of tick except the cattle fever tick carries this fever. The wood ticks which sometimes get on children, and the ticks we find on clogs, rabbits chickens, turtles, and many other animals do not carry tick fever. These other kinds of ticks some- times get on cattle and annoy them, but they do not and can not give tick fever to the cattle. ■ The fever tick carries cattle fever from a sick animal to a well animal. It carries this disease much as certain kinds of mosquitoes carry malaria from one human being to another. But the ticks do not carry this fever straight from a sick animal to a well one. Once a tick has gotten This cow is djing with tick fever. 16 THE CATTLE FEVER TICK. A jii^^^^^l t F!% 'WM ^i|V ^ r ^Fb These are fever ticks. A, Full-grown female; B, young fever tick after first molt. The pictures are much larger than real ticks. These ticks, found on dogs and other animals, do not give tick fe\'er to cattle. A, American dog tick; B, Gulf coast tick; C, brown dog tick. (Enlarged.) on an animal it does not leave that animal until it drops off to die or to lay eggs. So live ticks do not pass from one cow or steer to another. How do the fever ticks carry tick fever from a sick animal to a well animal? The tick that is suck- ing blood from a sick animal gets the germs of this fever in the blood it eats. These fever germs stay in the tick's body and get into its eggs. The germs TICKS KILL MANY CATTLE. 17 in the egg get into the body of the baby tick before it hatches out. The baby tick after it hatches out carries these germs with it when it gets on a cow or steer or calf in search of blood. When the tick bores its well into the hide it lets some of these fever germs get into the blood of the animal. These germs spread through the blood of the cow or steer or calf and make it sick with tick fever. Sometimes these germs do "not make the animal very sick. Such animals do not die of fever. But in many cases the germs make the cattle very sick and kill them. Thousands of cows and steers and calves are killed every year in the South b}^ this tick fever carried by ticks. Many animals that do not die of the fever are weak and scra^vnv and sickly for the rest of their lives. The kind of cattle the fever tick lets live. 18 THE CATTLE FEVER TICK. The fever and the loss of the blood that the ticks suck out weaken many animals so that they can not stand winter storms. They die of exposure or starva- tion. Many of these would not die if the fever ticks had not weakened them. Many cows are made so weak by the fever and the loss of the blood the ticks suck that they can not care for their baby calves in the spring. Many calves die at this season. It is called "spring loss," and costs cattle raisers a lot of money. Cattle owners could save these losses by killing the fever ticks. AN ENEMY OF FINE CATTLE. Cattle brought into the South from places where there are no fever ticks get tick fever very easily and are almost sure to die from it. This is why good, tick-free l^reeding animals can not be brought to a ticky farm to improve the breed of the cattle. The fever ticks are almost sure to kill good milch cows, good bulls, or good beef cattle brought in from tick-free places. Fine animals are so valuable that a farmer can not afford to keep them if ticks suck out their l)lood and keep them from being healthy. This is why we see so many scrawny cattle where there are ticks. In ticky country we do not see herds of fine, fat, grade, or pure-bred stock. But where the tick has been Idlled in the South you will see fatter and better cattle on almost every farm. GETTING RID OF TICKS. 19 20 THE CATTLE FEVER TICK. GETTING RID OF TICKS HELPS A COUNTY. You can see that it is a very good thing for cattle owners to get rid of ticks. Without ticks they have more milk and meat to sell. Their cattle do not die of fever. They can raise more cattle. .They can raise better kinds of cattle. They get full returns from their feed. They make more money. Getting rid of fever ticks is a good thing also for all the business men of the county. If cattle raisers and dairymen have more milk and meat to sell, they will have more money to spend in the stores for clothes and groceries and machiner3^ They will have more money to put into the banks. When there are no ticks, the cattle raisers get more money for their beef cattle at the big cattle markets. This brings more money from the outside into the county. When more money comes into the county, the people of the county are more prosperous. There is more business and more work for them. Everyone gets a share of the extra money. A MEDICINE WPIICH KILLS TICKS. It is easy to get rid of cattle fever ticks. It does not cost much money nor take very much time or troulDle. It is worth doing. The United States Department of Agriculture has found a sure and simple way to kill all of the fever ticks in a county. It has made a medicine called an arsenical bath. This medicine kills all the ticks that are wet with it. The easiest way to wet the ticks is to make the cattle swim through a vat filled with this medicine. To make a vat, the people first dig a deep, long trench. They line this trench with concrete and MEDICINE TO KILL TICKS. 21 When the cattle swim through this vat, the medicine kills tlie ticks. This shows how the vat is builL. 22 THE CATTLE FEVER TICK. cement, so that it will hold water. Then they fill the vat with water and put the arsenic and other medicines into the water. This makes what is called an '^arsenical dipping solution." The cattle are driven to the vat and made to swim through the medicine. The medicine does not hurt the animal, but kills all the seed ticks, male ticks, and egg-laying ticks that are on it. Dipped animals trapping baby ticks. After the cattle have been dipped they are driven back to their pastures. The cattle become traps for the seed ticks in the grass and for the little ticks that will hatch out from the eggs already in the grass. The seed ticks in the pasture crawl up on the animals after they have been dipped. In two weeks the animals are given another swim through the medicine. The medicine kills all the young ticks TRAPPING BABY TICKS. 23 that have gotten on the cattle. The ticks are killed before they have had a chance to make any eggs or suck much blood. Then the animals go back to pasture again and trap still more seed ticks. After the animals have been dipped in the medicine every two weeks all spring and summer there will be no more ticks to lay eggs. There will be no more eggs left to hatch out a fresh crop of seed ticks. All the ticks that have been trapped by the cattle have been killed by dipping. All the little seed ticks that did not get on the cattle have starved to death. EVERY ANBIAL MUST BE DIPPED. AVhere the people of a coimty see that every cow, calf, steer, horse, mule, and colt is dipped regularly during the spring and summer, they will get rid of the ticks in their county in a single year. ' All the cattle in the coimty must be dipped. It will not do to dip some cattle and to let others go undipped. The undipped cattle will spread egg-laying ticks along the roads and in the free pastures and woods. The eggs which these ticks la}^ wull hatch into seed ticks that will get on undipped cattle. Those that do not get on cattle during the clipping season may still be alive in the pasture in the fall. They may then get back on the dipped cattle when it is too cold to dip cattle again in the medicine. Every cow, steer, or calf that is not dipped in the medicine regularly is liable to carry and spread ticks wherever it goes. As long as there are any ticks alive on any of the cattle the coimty can not get entirely rid of fever ticks. 24 THE CATTLE FEVER TICK. HORSES AND MLT.ES ALSO MUST BE DIPPED. Fever ticks sometimes hide on horses and colts and mules. They do not cause fever in these ani- mals. The few ticks that are on horses and mules must be killed or the seed ticks which hatch from their eggs will get on cattle. Therefore, it is neces- sary to make horses and colts and mules, as well as cattle, swim through the medicine. IT PAYS TO DIP CATTLE. It does not cost anyone much money to dip the animals. All the people of the county help pay for the vats, the medicine, and for the dipping inspectors. Where people want to get rid of the ticks the United States Department of Agriculture, without cost to the county, will send trained men to help the county build vats, mix the medicine, and dip the cattle. The extra money the people will make from their cattle will pay them back many times for the money they spend for dipping. The extra money will pay farmers well for all the time they use in driving their cattle to the vats. ^lANY COUNTIES ALREADY FREED FROM TICKS. The people in hundreds of counties in the South already have gotten rid of ticks by using this medicine in dipping vats. Study the little map on the next page. Get your teacher to help you find the spot on this map where you live. TIIE VICTOIJV OVER TICKS. 25 2G Tin: CATTLt: TEVEIt TICK. All the country that is south of the red line across the top of the map was full of fever ticks up to the year 1906. These ticks were so dangerous to cattle in tick- free country that the United States Government said that no cattle with fever ticks on them should be shipped out of a ticky State to go to farms where there were no fever ticks. This is called a " quaran- Cattle in quarantine pens. These cattle are from ticky country. They are kept away from clean cattle. tine" to prevent the spread of tick fever. The Gov- ernment made this rule because these fever ticks would give the fever to tick-free cattle and kill them. This rule makes it harder for owners of ticky cattle to ship their cattle to the big cattle markets in other. States. They have to keep their ticky cattle in quarantine cars and pens away from all tick-free cattle until they reach the slaughterhouse. THE TICK-FKEE COUNTRY. 27 Ticky cattle bring lower prices per pound than tick-free cattle. It is more trouble and it costs more to ship ticky cattle. THE TICK IS DIPPED OUT OF THE WHITE SPOTS. The people living in the counties shown in white below the red line on the map at last got tired of ticks. They asked the United States Department of Agriculture to help them. The Department sent men to show them how to build dipping vats and how to mix the medicine to kill the ticks. Wherever the people dipped all their cattle regu- larly they got rid of these ticks. The white places on the map below the red line show where the people have killed all the fever ticks with this medicine. These counties have been freed from the troublesome quarantine rules. The fever ticks have been driven out from 313,800 square miles of the South. The red spots on the map show where the people have not yet got rid of fever ticks. There are still 414,765 square miles of red territory to be freed from ticks. GLAD THEY GOT RID OF TICKS. The people who live in the white sections on the map are very glad now that they got rid of the fever ticks. They will not allow ticky cattle to be shipped into their clean counties for fear that the cattle ticks will get back on their cattle. They write letters to the Department of Agri- culture saying that they get more milk from their 28 THE CATTLE FEVER TICK. ^ o