58 



^^= 



9. Feed rice, if bowels are loose. 

 10. Carefully watch droppings of fowl for indications of disease. 



Make up your mind at the start that you will be so careful that it 

 will be next to impossible for disease to break out. 



Tegetmeier gives a very respectable list of diseases to which pheasants 

 are subject, among them being colds, gapes, roup, tuberculosis, pneumonia, 

 cramp (an affection of the bones of the leg), skin necrosis, fowl enteritis 

 (cholera) and scurfy legs. Birds may also contract lead poisoning through 

 eating shot picked up on ground that has been hunted over. 



POWDER TREATMENT FOR GAPES.— Gapes, the very common 

 disease which is easily diagnosed by the "sneezing" of the birds, is, fortu- 

 nately, rather easy to cure, provided it does not attack very young birds. 

 The so-called sneezing arises from the efforts of the bird to expel from its 

 windpipe the worms {Syngamus trachealis) that are lodged there. The 

 treatment is to place the affected birds in a coop, closed fairly tightly, and 

 blow into it with a bellows camlin or blackerite powders, which are to be 

 had at the larger poultry supply houses. The Rogers' type of rearing coop, 

 as previously described, has a hole in the front, a few inches above the 

 slats for the insertion of the nozzle of the bellows. Mr. Rogers uses 

 blackerite, at the rate of a teaspoonful to a coop of fifteen or twenty birds. 

 Mr. Dunn gives three puffs of the bellows to each coop. The birds are 

 kept exposed to the powder approximately three minutes. The coughing 

 caused by the powder results in the discharge of the worms, but the ground 

 on which the coop stood should be quicklimed, as the expelled worms will 

 otherwise infect the soil. 



Tegetmeier recommends the employment of the fumes of carbolic 

 acid in treating gapes. A hot brick placed within the coop on which a 

 few drops of acid are dropped will cause a vapor which will bring results, 

 and this is the inexpensive method for the small breeder. 



MENACE OF SCALY LEGS.— Scaly or scurfy legs is another ailment 

 that is fairly common and yields readily to treatment. It is contracted 

 by young pheasants usually from foster mothers, as the disease is quite 

 common among domestic fowl. It occurs in the form of crusts that appear 

 on the legs and toes of fowl, caused by the raising of the scales covering 

 this portion of their anatomy by a minute parasite, (Sarcoptes miitans), 

 which takes up its abode under them and sets up irritation. The disease 

 is infectious and it is easy to see how the pheasant chicks could get it from 

 their foster mother. Clean-legged fowl only should be used as foster 

 mothers and the legs of these should be carefully examined for evidence of 

 the disease before they are placed on eggs. On the Sherburne, N. Y. Farm, 

 the legs of the adult pheasant breeders are gone over with a brush saturated 



