May 2, 1908.] Agricultural Gazette of N.S.W. 897 



Chapter IX. 



Crop Troubles. 

 There are several diseases of fowl's crops, the majority of the cases being 

 brought about by careless feeding, while sometimes it is due to the birds 

 themselves. 



The fowl's crop is found at the bottom of the gullet, and from various causes 

 the food may become stoppeil there, 

 just as it had been swallowed. In the 

 course of the fowls' wanderitigs they 

 swallow a very wide collection of 

 materials— seeds, weeds, insects, worms, 

 grubs, pebbles, itc, and if long, coarse 

 grass is had access to, some of this may 

 form into a ball and obstruct the 

 passage, with the result that the bird 

 gets no nutriment at all, becomes 

 hungry, eats more, all of wdiich lodges 

 in the crop until it assumes an enormous 

 size, and, whennoticed, the fowl, through 

 starvation, has become shockingly thin 

 of flesh, and, to save its life, treatment 

 is necessary. Yarded fowls, if they 

 have been receiving no green food, and 

 are then supplied with large quantities 

 of it, sometimes eat to repletion, and 

 the crop, being unaljle to perf(jrm the 

 first and necessary assimilation or 

 softening process, the food forms into 

 a ball, and being unable to press down 

 through the passage, is a cause of hard 

 crop. 



Feeding new soft wheat or maize is 

 often responsible for another sort of crop 

 trouble The grain swells, the crop 

 becomes a hard mass, treatment again 

 being necessary. Occasionally a piece 

 of broad grass has been swallowed : 

 this, getting across the passage, bars 

 the food from its legitimate course, and 

 causes swollen crop. Often a piece of 

 string gets into the bran or pollard, 

 and may cause the obstruction ; or other 

 things may be responsible. 



Frequently a fowl may have swollen 

 or enlarged crop for some time before 



