Preface

Alfred Stefferud

EDITOR

THIS YEARBOOK gives information about the cause, nature, and prevention of the common diseases of animals on American farms.

We have tried to make it useful, practical, and complete within the limits of time, expense, and scope that we had to observe. It is not a "veterinary handbook."

Keeping his animals as healthy as he can is the responsibility of the owner. As many of our chapters emphasize, treatment and cure—if there is a cure—are primarily the responsibility of the veterinarian.

In fact, one of our purposes is to tell the owner how much he can do but also to warn him that there is much he cannot do and should not attempt to do for a sick animal—any more than he should try to treat himself for tuberculosis or a broken leg.

A precursor of this volume was the 1942 Yearbook of Agriculture, Keeping Livestock Healthy, which is nearly out of print. The present book was not thought of as a new or revised edition of the earlier volume; it is an entirely different book because knowledge of the subject has developed so greatly in the intervening years. (The foreword to the 1942 Yearbook said the losses caused by diseases, parasites, and insect pests in the United States "amount to well over 400 million dollars a year in spite of an enviable record in working out and applying control methods." The losses have since been placed at more than 2 billion dollars!)

This book follows much the same plan as the earlier work. It is divided into 11 sections: Introduction; basic principles of health and disease of animals; diseases and parasites that affect two or more species; diseases and parasites that affect cattle, swine, sheep and goats, horses and mules, poultry, fur-bearing animals, and dogs and cats. The first three sections are arranged to give a survey of the nature and prevention of disease.

Although we thought of our task as presentation of background details rather than the preparation of a book to be kept in the stable for quick consultation in emergencies, we have added a few devices to help the reader who needs help in a hurry—a table of contents and a full index that lists the items by species of animals, name of the organism, synonyms of the disease, symptoms, and so on.

Readers who now are seeing a Yearbook for the first time may like to know that since 1936 each of the Yearbooks (a century-old institution) has been devoted to one subject. Recent Yearbooks, which still can be bought from the Superintendent of Documents, Government Printing Office, Washington 25, D. C., at the prices given, are: Science in Farming ($2); Grass ($2); Trees ($2); Crops in Peace and War—agricultural chemistry ($2-50); Insects ($2-50); Plant Diseases ($2,50); Marketing ($1.75); and Water ($2).

The 1956 Yearbook Committee included:

Dr. O. E. Reed

Dr. Hugh C. McPhee

Dr. B. T. Simms

Dr. Benjamin Schwartz

Dr. Ralph E. Hodgson

Dr. Lane A. Moore

Dr. T. C. Byerly

Dr. N. R. Ellis

Dr. E. G. McKibben

Mr. C. P. Heisig

Dr. John R. Matchett

Dr. C. D. Van Houweling

Mr. Samuel B. Detwiler, Jr.

Mr. J. Kendall McClarren

Dr. E. F. Knipling

Since the Committee started its work of planning and outlining the volume, two members retired from the Department of Agriculture after many years of outstanding service. Dr. Reed and Dr. McPhee left a record of devoted and efficient public service to the livestock industry and in the solution of its problems.