THE BOOK OF POULTRY. 



remarkable facts, however, are the following : 

 Whole worms coughed up are eaten by young 

 chickens most eagerly, and every worm con- 

 tains, as already stated, many thousands of the 

 ova ; but in clean, healthy chickens never but very 

 few worms, and often none at all, can be found 

 after this in the trachea, if the chicken be kept 

 apart ! It looks as if the fresh worms and their 

 ova passed through the digestive canal, most 

 of the ova being voided unhatched ; or, in other 

 words, a certain time seems needed for maturing. 

 Dr. Salmon states as the result of experiment 

 that ten to fifteen worms (containing many 

 thousands of eggs) have been fed to a single 

 chicken, with the result that only four or five 

 worms at the utmost ever appeared in the 

 trachea ; and he accordingly acutely remarks, 

 in reference to the path of the parasites from 

 the digestive canal to the trachea, that " no 

 doubt the path is a difficult and dangerous one 

 for them." Still later Dr. Francis A. Winder, 

 of Glasnevin, co. Dublin, made experiments, of 

 which he has kindly given us some details 

 (besides the general results stated in an article 

 in the Medical Press, of Feb. I2, IQ02). In 

 June, igoi.he penned a male and female chicken 

 a month old, and on June 7 gave the male two 

 worms ; on June 10 the female was given two 

 worms; on June 20 four worms were crushed 

 and mixed with food, all which was eaten ; and 

 on June 27 worms were placed in the drinking 

 water, which was left unchanged for a week. 

 Both remained perfectly healthy ; the cockerel 

 being killed and eaten at Christmas, and the 

 pullet being alive and laying in March, 1902. 

 It is clear that fresh worms and ova can be 

 eaten with safety, and pass through the digestive 

 canal to the vent unhatched. It is well estab- 

 lished that in the case of the thread -worm 

 (Oxyuris vermicularis) children re-infect them- 

 selves by scratching alternately at the anus and 

 the nostrils. And these later researches seem 

 to make it probable that where a chicken is 

 infested with insects, which can range over its 

 body freely, and many of which insects can be 

 seen to resort occasionally to the nostrils, either 

 for moisture or some other purpose, ova may 

 become attached to them in the neighbourhood 

 of the vent, and, after thus spending sufficient 

 time to ripen, or perhaps even hatch, be con- 

 veyed from that region, in a state ready for 

 growth, to those portals of the trachea. It 

 appears to be established that in sufficiently 

 warm, damp seasons the ova will also mature, 

 probably into embryos, on the damp grass, and 

 so infect the chickens ; but all the facts seem 

 to render necessary some such course and means 

 of conveyance as here supposed. 



This brings us to treatment, and has been 

 given as bearing upon one method which has 

 been so well proved, that practical men will 

 hesitate to sneer at it. About 1865 the late 

 Mr. Halsted, of New York State, found on 

 his chicks some large insects — apparently ticks, 

 though he figures a louse — ranging from two 

 to a dozen, and whose heads were embedded in 

 the skin. He cleared one brood assiduously, 

 but not the others. That season he had gapes 

 badly, losing all or part of the other broods, 

 but not one chick of the brood he had cleared. 

 Picking was tedious, however, and Mr. Halsted 

 compounded the following ointment, except 

 that we have modified it for the official mer- 

 curial ointment of the British Pharmacopoeia : — 



Mercurial ointment i oz. 



Sulphur ... ... 3 „ 



Crude petroleum ... ... ... J ,, 



Lard .. 2 „ 



This he applied to the heads of the young 

 chicks when putting them out (sparingly, or 

 mercurial poisoning would be produced), and 

 afterwards he never lost a chicken of those so 

 treated. Other experience in America cor- 

 roborated this. Not only so, but after we had 

 published this treatment, breeder after breeder 

 testified to its success in the Live Stock Journal, 

 particularly during the widespread epidemics 

 of iSSoand 1881. With only a few it failed, and 

 there chiefly through poisoning by carelessness 

 in application. Facts of this kind are not set 

 aside by sneers, and the practical breeder who 

 finds his yard in danger will be slow to neglect 

 a precaution which is so easy, and will, at all 

 events, benefit his young stock in other ways. 

 It is significant in the same direction that gapes 

 has been found much less severe where chicks 

 have been hatched and reared artificially in 

 detached broods. 



When the disease has actually broken out 

 there are various remedies. As a preventive 

 for other broods which may be coming on, 

 camphor in the water has undoubtedly some 

 efficacy, and every vessel should be weekly 

 scalded. The old-fashioned cure was to strip 

 a small quill-feather, all but a small tuft at the 

 point, and (moistening it in turpentine or not) 

 introduce it into the trachea, turn it round, and 

 withdraw it with the worms. This is eftectual, 

 but requires care to prevent lacerating the wind- 

 pipe or causing suffocation. In this way thirty 

 worms have been successfully extracted from one 

 chicken. A very much better method is to take 

 two straight hairs from a horse's tail, laid together, 

 tie a knot on the end of the pair, and cut off the 

 ends close to the knot. This is passed straight 

 {i.e. without twisting) down the windpipe as far 



