You’re taking the brisket – the lore of blackleg disease in cattle

In recent weeks, Department of Agriculture officials noted a surge in the number of cases of blackleg in cattle referred for post mortem, and advised farmers that vaccination is the best strategy in ensuring no outbreaks in their herds.

Blackleg is an acute, highly fatal disease of cattle and sheep, caused by infection with the bacterium Clostridium Chauvoei, which is found in the soil. The name derives from the fact that the site of infection is most often a leg muscle that becomes dark in colour.

In his study on the folklore of cattle diseases, Michael Doherty, UCD, found that in Ireland blackleg was also variously known as black-quarter (with its Irish variants ‘cheathrú dhubh’ and ‘cheathrú ghorm’), quarter-evil, quarter-ill and speedy disease, the latter presumably coming from the speed at which animals succumbed to its effects.

The disease has been noted since the early 18th century and recognised as usually fatal; even then prevention was seen as the best course of action.

An account of ‘joint murrain’ from 1707 recorded the deaths of two calves that had recently grazed on ‘young, fresh broad-clover’. Bleeding a pint of blood from the jugular vein was advocated as a preventative measure. The calf should then be drenched with this blood mixed with a handful of salt.

In the mid-19th century, bleeding and drenching continued as the basis for prevention. Thomas C Graham, an Irish cow-doctor, published The Cow and Sheep Doctor in 1852, recognising that some lands were more prone to the disease which he attributed to the presence of ‘certain herbs’. He advised bleeding in October; four pints from a two-year-old, three from a yearling and two from a weanling.

Less crude

His drench was less crude than that of a century earlier, constituting a mixture of nitre, alum, cream of tartar, garlic and hiera picra, all mixed in salt butter, put down the beast’s throat in a ball, then washed down with a draught made from boiled rue and wormwood.

In areas susceptible to the disease, it was advised that the process should be repeated in February.

Although Irish farmers recognised that prevention was key, their preventative methods were generally dubious, often relying on magic or religion.

In Co Waterford, farmers resorted to placing the Curraghmore Amulet, a simple globe of almost transparent crystal, in water, which was then given to the animals to drink.

The amulet was the property of the Marquis of Waterford; apparently brought from Jerusalem by one of the Le Poer family at the time of the Crusades. It was kept by the Marquis’ steward, who admitted that he had no faith in its power, but lent it countrywide to believing farmers, on a guarantee of its safe return.

The practice of lending the object was discontinued in 1881, when the occasional applicant for its services was instead furnished with a card on which was written a herbal prescription for black-quarter.

A major outbreak of blackleg was reputed to have been overcome at Templeshanbo, Co Wexford when the local holy well was renovated, with financial aid from a clergyman, born in the area, who had emigrated to the US.

Other preventative practices included placing some of the cow’s dung in her calf’s mouth, administering nettle water, cutting a nick in a calf’s ear between the two Lady Days (25 March and 15 August) and keeping a castrated buck goat with the calves.

Interviewed in 2012, Bill O’Connell, Askeaton, described how his father kept a kid goat with the calves on the advice of a gentleman who had returned from America.

He claimed that the farm saw no case of blackleg while the kid, taken from its mother and reared with the calves, was present.

Keeping a goat with cattle, especially dairy cows, is often mentioned in folklore collected in the early decades of the 20th century. Apparently, they were useful in preventing contagious abortion, eating harmful weeds and herbs, or merely as a lucky charm.

Other accounts described using garlic as a preventative measure, including inserting a mixture of garlic and soot into an incision in an animal’s dewlap. Piercing the animal’s dewlap, the fold of skin hanging from its neck, was fundamentally sound, resulting in a crude vaccination.

When an animal is lying down, the dewlap and brisket are always in contact with the ground.

Where there is an open wound in either, any organism in the environment can gain access to the animal’s system, exposing it to these bacterial organisms.

This exposure is not overwhelming, as neither the dewlap nor brisket have a large supply of rich nutrients for bacteria to multiply rapidly. Therefore, the animal is given time to build up immunity.

A piece of copper wire was usually fixed through the piercing in order to keep the wound open until this immunity was secured.

Matthew O’Reilly, a Fianna Fáil TD from Meath, referred to the prevalence of the practice in Dáil Éireann on 14 July 1948.

O’Reilly was debating the enormous losses from blackleg, and the fact that farmers couldn’t afford vaccines, with James Dillon, the Minister for Agriculture.

When he teased Dillon about his knowledge of the practice, the minister reacted with: “The copper wire is for another disease. I cannot remember what it is.”

Goatskin dipped in garlic, pig rings or tape covered with iodine were used as alternatives to the wire

At any rate, blackleg vaccines were scarce in those post-war years. The Veterinary Research Laboratory issued 71,382 and 69,632 doses, respectively, in the years 1946 and 1947.

Goatskin dipped in garlic, pig rings or tape covered with iodine were used as alternatives to the wire, occasionally attached to other non-fleshy areas, mainly the ears or tail. Garlic, soot and iodine most likely acted as antiseptics.

In April 1998 the Irish Farmers Journal carried a story about a Mayo farmer who found the lower limbs of animals, that had died from blackleg, lodged in the roof of an old farm building.

Other accounts, collected by the Irish Folklore Commission, described that diseased limbs were similarly hung in the chimney.

The majority of the descriptions saw the practice as a prophylactic talisman, warding off evil spirits and protecting future generations of the herd from the disease.

One 1937 account from Co Offaly read, ‘if there is blackleg on the farm and the animal dies, cut off one of its hind legs and hang it in the chimney and as the flesh is melting the blackleg is going out of the land’.

However, placing the limb in the chimney arguably had an effective practical use.

Cut and sewn to skin

These limbs were likely the remnants of another early attempt at vaccination, where strips of the affected muscle were cut and sewn to the skin of healthy calves.

Smoking and drying the affected quarter by hanging it in the chimney was a most effective and ingenious way of preserving a supply of vaccine for further generations of calves.

If not preserved, a diseased limb would decompose quickly leaving no living tissue.

The bacteria in this dried limb could survive for decades, as the bacteria that causes bubonic plague survive in soil.

Scrapings

Scrapings from the dried muscle were similarly spread on tape and inserted, as a seton, through the skin of healthy animals.

The late Jim White, who practised as a vet in both Tulla and Patrickswell, remembered calves being vaccinated by piercing the dewlap with copper wire, which was first inserted into the limb in the chimney.

Were these practices, that prevailed in Ireland until at least the 1950s, effective? In 1901, the newly established Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction sent Professor Falkner C Mason into the countryside to deliver ‘veterinary hygiene’ lectures to farmers.

Practical advice

He offered practical advice on the best methods of preventing diseases, such as blackleg and white scour.

Mason found that farmers ‘knew nothing’ of even the simplest scientific methods, their veterinary treatments having no ‘prosaic explanation’, based as they were on fairy and spirit beliefs.

However, he saw their rudimentary vaccines for blackleg as effective.

Writing a century later, Michael Doherty claimed that these early vaccination processes would have ‘stimulated a crude protective immune response’ in the animal.

Indeed, the earliest manufactured vaccines for blackleg followed a similar process.

In 1879, three French veterinarians, Arloing, Cornevin and Thomas, discovered that cattle could be protected against blackleg by inoculation with virulent material obtained from animals that had died from the disease.

This led to a series of experiments, which finally led to the introduction of preventative vaccination.

John Flaherty is a farmer from Kilflyn, Co Kerry. He holds a PhD in history from MIC, Limerick. He in interested in talking to farmers about anything of historical agricultural interest. Email kilflynnium@icloud.com