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kept up till they can see again. Always add a little sulphur to their 

 food, in bad cases, where the birds are very feverish. It is very 

 seldom they recover when the disease goes on intensifying and growing 

 worse up to twenty one days. The great thing is to keep up the 

 strength, as the disease is terribly debilitating. 



" Yaws or chicken-pox is by far the most fatal disease among 

 chickens. Adult fowls are seldom attacked with it, or indeed any 

 after they have passed three months of age. 



" Gapes. — This is another chicken disease, and comes from their 

 eating food that is fermented and full of disease germs, or from 

 sleeping on damp, dirty ground where other fowls have slept and 

 roosted before. Gapes seldom or never come, except after heat and 

 damp. The tiny eggs, which are secreted in the throat and round the 

 entrance to the crop, will only hatch at a certain temperature and 

 under certain conditions ; and if these conditions are absent, the eggs 

 will remain where they are month after month, or till the chicken has 

 become strong enough to eject the worms directly they hatch, and 

 cause discomfort. 



" The worm is very small and double or forked, and they attach 

 themselves like minute suckers to the roof of the throat, and the sides 

 just behind the tongue. I have also found them once or twice in the 

 nostrils. The symptoms are a frequent gaping and a cough or sneeze , 

 and affected birds are generally to be found round the water-tins, 

 where by constant drinking they try to allay the irritation and fever 

 caused by the worms. It is through the drinking-water that the 

 disease is spread, for the chickens cough and sneeze over it ; and each 

 time they do so both worms and eggs are ejected into it and greedily 

 picked up by other chicks standing by. and thus they too get the 

 disease. A teaspoonful of kerosene in the drinking-water of affected 

 birds will do good and help to heal the throat after the worms have 

 been killed. But all birds known to be or suspected of suffering from 

 gapes should be isolated at once, and the rest of the yard treated to a 

 good feed of chopped onion or garlic, either raw or cooked, which is 

 the best preventive of the disease. 



" To cure those that are already suffering with the disease, place 

 them in a cask or box and cover with a bag : then put a few handfuls 

 of powdered lime into another coarse bag; introduce it into the cask, 

 and. while keeping the latter cov< red, shake it vigorously. The idea 

 is to let the lime get into the throats and nostrils, and make them 

 cough and sneeze. Two or three applications of this treatment will 

 cure the most obstinate case of gapes ; as a rule, one is sufficient. 

 Another method is to dip a leather in Turpentine and quickly pass it 

 down the windpipe of the fowl. This is also very effectual when pro- 

 perly carried out. 



" Hen* Eating their own Eggs is another morbid craving, and it is 

 also caused by an uncomfortable nest, or the wish to clean up the mess 

 when an egg has got broken in the nest. If an egg is broken during 

 the first few days of setting, ihr hen will at once eat it to get rid of it, 

 but that is not saying the hen is an egg-eater at other times. Very, 

 very few hens eat their eggs from choice, therefore one should always 

 inquire closely as to the comfort and surroundings of the nest before 



