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Show High Pressure Spray Forces Out, Kills Cattle Grubs New Treatment Promises To Conquer Ranching Industry's Worst Pest Cattle grubs, those ugly parasites that cause a loss of leather, meal and milk valued at 100 million dollars dol-lars annually, can' now be controlled by spraying. The Insecticide, mixed with water, is blown Into the hair on the backs of the infested animals. ani-mals. At a pressure of between 250 and 400 pounds the solution penetrates pene-trates the holes that the grubs have burrowed in the skin. The grubs come out and die soon afterwards. A portable pumping unit provides the pressure for spraying the insecticide. insecti-cide. At a recent demonstration on a ranch near Fresno, Calif., a group of agricultural, experts and farm journal editors watched while a herd of Hereford cattle was treated with the spray. The animals were driven into a chute, and as each one passed the operator, he played the nozzle over its back, washing off dirt, grease and scabs as well as killing the grubs. The cattle grub and heel fly are different forms of the same insect. Starting in the spring, when It is in the fly form, the heel fly lays eggs on the heel and belly hairs of the animals. These eggs hatch into maggots which work their way through the hide and enter the muscle tissues. JDuring the next nine months these maggots migrate through the Internal organs of the cattle and come out along the back. Cysts are formed and the maggots mag-gots then turn into grubs about an inch long. In the spring they work their way out of the holes in the hide and fall to the ground. Within a few weeks they turn into heel flies and the yearly cycle repeats itself. it-self. The U. S. department of agriculture agricul-ture arrives at its $100,000,000 loss in meat, milk and leather in the following fol-lowing ways: (1) Every hide with five or more grub holes is classed as No. 2 grade, j at a discount of one cent a pound. , Hides with very many grub holes must be used for by-products, as they are not worth tanning. It Is estimated esti-mated that enough leather was lost this way during 1941 to provide shoes for a million marching men for an entire year. (2) Millions of pounds of the best beef are trimmed away from grubby carcasses every year by packers, and this loss is reflected in the price paid for cattle on the hoof and meat In the retail markets. (3) Milk production has been shown to suffer as much as 25 per cent from the presence of grubs in a cow. Heel fly attacks can cause an equal loss in production. (4) The migration of cattle grubs in cattle makes them sluggish and unthrifty. They lose weight or do not put on weight. They require more feed, and in some cases infection in-fection resulting in death has occurred oc-curred from a crushed cattle grub in an animal's back. (5) The attacks of the heel fly cause running, stampeding,; and V s ! h ter- ,i ' UPvr & ! '! A v v l& si i.v. if , ; , - ' V K s - - -1 t f y i ' 4 S I v ' ; fJ r v 1 7fA j h H J r '' i fM , f: - J 'i I - ' : - ? S s 41 ? S ' ' ' -x C ?? P ' WlieB sprayed with insecticide that penetrates their burrows, grubs crawl out and die. nigh pressure is necessary to do the job thoroughly. loitering in the shade and water,! when they should be grazing. The results arc poor feeding and loss of weight as well as injury and miring down. Ridding the cattle of grubs, however, how-ever, is only one use for the power sprayer. It has many other uses, such as whitewashing, painting and disinfecting, for fly and mosquito control, killing weeds, and spraying fruits and vegetables. One of the most important and newest uses is for spraying dry grass or hay with molasses to make a food palatable for cattle. The machine also will serve as a fire engine in emergencies. emergen-cies. Because of their war uses, however, how-ever, only a few of the sprayers will be available to farmers for a while. The rancher leads a busy life and usually does not have time to devote de-vote several days to painting a barn by hand. As a consequence the buildings suffer from the ravages of weather. With the paint gun attachment, attach-ment, he can easily paint a barn of ordinary size in a few hours. Even the farmer's wife can use r the machine, it is so simple, and she can rid the ranch of many of the flies, lice and ticks that invade her chicken house, and the grounds surrounding sur-rounding her home. She thus protects pro-tects the health of her family and of her flock. The same machine can be used J(M- life. JMfPi Salt grass, coaled with a thin mixture of molasses and water, becomes quite attractive to cattle that scorned it before. The sweetened grass proved quite nourishing in tests. Old hay, treated with molasses, also was eaten with relish. by the farmer to spray his hog pens, his dairy barn and his outbuildings. out-buildings. By using diesel oil, or other weed killer, the farmer can economically kill weeds and then, after emptying the machine and refilling re-filling with the proper disinfectant, he can attack and destroy fruit or vegetable pests. During the dry season when cattle cat-tle do not easily graze, he can whet their appetites and consequently increase in-crease their weight or their milk production . by spraying the dry material with a mixture of water (331 by volume) and cane molasses. molas-ses. Range cattle on the Fresno ranch, which had refused salt grass and old hay, were found to relish the same material after it was covered cov-ered with the molasses spray.' It was a question of teaching old dogies new tricks. Scarce as feed is, they'd better learn them, too. |