Abstract
Good animal health doesn't just happen.
Pets and livestock stay healthy only as long as knowledgeable, caring owners, producers, veterinarians, and other health professionals see to their wellbeing. That is the message in Animal Health: Livestock and Pets, the U.S. Department of Agriculture's 1984 Yearbook of Agriculture.
It is written as if the reader were a caretaker responsible for protecting animals from a wide variety of disease organisms.
To carry out this responsibility, if you are among the millions of Americans who own livestock or pets, you need to know what makes them sick and what you can do to reduce their chances of contracting a serious illness.
As one Yearbook author puts it ... "professional approaches don't count nearly as much as a person's own personal commitment, when the health of his or her animal is concerned. Services and programs provided by animal health officials and veterinarians respond to the fact that people care."
This Yearbook is designed to help you fulfill that role as the animal's protector. It is a primer on major animal diseases; on how to take precautions against disease organisms in advance; on how to spot symptoms; on how to work with animal health professionals to cure animals and contain outbreaks that could be devastating not only to the animals but to the economy as well.
Included are a wide variety of creatures ranging from catfish, which are commercially raised by farmers for an ever expanding market, to hamsters marketed mainly through pet stores. The major species of pets and livestock are, of course, the principal subjects.
The book should prove popular when it becomes available to the public in January, given that livestock and pets make up an estimated $80 billion industry in the United States. Meat and other animal products provide well over half the food by weight in the average American's diet and dominate two of our four food groups.
Our pets entertain, comfort, protect and serve the people in 85 million American households who own one or more of them.
A scientist might add that animals contribute greatly to the human storehouse of knowledge on subjects ranging from geology to genetics.
For any of the above reasons, or perhaps just because you want to know the gestation period of a porcupine ( 112 days) or how long snakes live (6 to 20 years depending on the variety), you will find Animal Health: Livestock and Pets a welcome addition to your library. It may even make you a better person, at least in the eyes of your animal friends.