The Hemoglobin Content of the Blood of Healthy and Anemic "salt-sick" Cattle^

A condition known as ^^salt sick'' affects cattle kept too long on certain range areas in Florida. Loss of appetite, followed by progressive loss of condition even to the point of emaciation, are the most prominent symptoms. Recent investigations UY have proved this to be a nutritional an(^.mia. The concentration of hemoglobin in the blood of cattle has beeq. studied as an index of the development of or recovery from this condition. Limited data are available concerning the average percentage of hemoglobin in bovine blood, but such variations as might be expected, considering the behavior of the other blood constituents, have never been measured for cattle under uniform conditions of feeding and ma^ageme^t. Aston (2), by some iron determinations on the blood of ^'bush sick'' (iron deficient) cattle in New Zealand, has shown anen^ia to be one of the symptoms of that condition. No direct determinations of hemoglobin were made. The object of this study was to determine the variations in the hemoglobin content of the blood of cattle observed at 2K-hour, daily, and semiannual intervals, the average values for healthy cattle, and the variations from these values in an anemia due to a naturally occurring iron, or iron and copper, deficiency, such as occurs in saltsick cattle. METHODS OF EXPERIMENTATION