1920

IOWA’S FIGHT ON HOG CHOLERA
1914 is witnessing a great battle for Iowa’s hog industry
Herman Steen, ’14

     There is a strange war going on in Iowa this year.  It is the fight on hog cholera, waged by science and its able allies against the forces of disease, which are aided by ignorance and doubt.
     1913 came and cholera exacted an enormous toll; estimates compiled by the Extension Department of Iowa State College place the loss at over $33,000,000.
     This is the present status of the fight on cholera.  It is a fight which is extending the length and breadth of the state, for there are but few counties where the loss has not been considerable.  Science is placing its main reliance on one weapon, and that weapon is the serum treatment.  Cholera is depending on no weapon at all but the disease, and the aid which it gets from distrustful and ignorant men who do not rally to the standard held aloft by science.

     The chief value of serum is preventive, not as a cure.  Some interesting data have been gathered on this point in Scott and Dallas counties the past year.  In Scott county 6,244 head were vaccinated before any cholera was in the herd; only 4 percent were lost.  3,025 were vaccinated after being slightly affected; 7 percent were lost.  3,516 were vaccinated when “quite sick” or three or four days later than they should have been; 39 percent died.  1,527 were treated ten days later than they should have been, or were “very sick”; 64 percent of these died.  This shows that the longer the disease is established in a hog, the less effective the serum treatment is in treating it.  Serum is further shown to be a powerful agent in preventing cholera, though of less value as a cure.

     Iowa, aroused by the
losses caused in 1912, started to make provision for the fight.  The legislature in 1913 appropriated $35,000 for the erection of a state serum plant.  This was completed in October.  It is the largest building of its kind in the world, being 116 feet wide and 178 feet long.  It has a capacity of 1,000 hogs, and when running at full swing, is able to produce 1,000,000 cubic centimeters of serum per week.  That amount of serum is sufficient to vaccinate 25,000 head of 100 pound hogs.  Serum is sold at the cost of manufacture to the farmers of the state.  Reports from serum sent out show that it has given excellent satisfaction.

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Explorations in Iowa History Project
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