CATTLE TICK.

Taranaki Daily News, 8 April 1921, Page 2

CATTLE TICK.

(To the Editor.) Sir,—I am not misled in the l£ast as you state in your issue of Saturday, the 26tb inst. I have been up North twice within this last twelve months, and I saw no cattle there with ticks that were anything different to the ordinary tattle lice, which 1 saw forty years aga> oh cattle In Rangltikei. Sir, you must bear in mind the letter of the 18th was not the first I saw about the cattle pest up north; not by a Jong. way. Where did the cattle tick come from to be up North and not here? As you say, the pest is not in Taranaki. No, that is so, they are not a pest here because our cattle don’t know what starvation is here, six or eight weeks the longest. Up North it is quite different. Cattle are turned into the tl-tree and left there to starve to death. Rabbits won’t live there. That is where I saw the so<-called tick, but they all belong te the same family, which I can prove. No, I d4n't think it is fair play to our farmers up North to say that the stock is afflicted with a pest that is dangerous, and also putting the country to more expense where it is unnecessary. No, enforce the law and punish the guilty ones. I am pretty certain it is through starvation, and in Australia the pest is 'still worse, where they get eight to ten months’ drought at a time.—l am, etc., J. COLEMAN. Bell Block, April 5. (The doubt about the kind of cattle tick can easily be settled by our correspondent bringing in to us samples of the tick to which he refers. We have samples of the tick, that is infecting the North and Bay of Plenty, which he may compare with those he knows.— Editor.) **-