DISEASES OF POULTRY. 181 



About a week afterward I was brushing the dry scale 

 from face and comb, and in the process I lifted entire 

 the cuticle and feathers from head and neck for three 

 inches down, which demonstrated the power of the oil 

 as a counter-irritant, and the necessity of care in its use. 

 These two medicines are all I have used since for distem- 

 per or roup, and so successful have I been that I think 

 it safe to say I have not lost five birds by roup in the past 

 two years. 



Chicken-pox warty blotches of comb and throat can 

 be treated with bromide, by giving three grains a day, 

 and isolating the bird till the spots dry and cleave off, 

 which will be in a week or ten days. The plan to remove 

 those caps is a very bad one, and only spreads the disease. 

 Patience, giving time for the bromide to do its work, 

 and the shedding of the dry scales, is all that is needed 

 for a cure. 



CHICKEN OR FOWL CHOLERA. 



There is nothing more unsatisfactory than a sick 

 chicken, or more difficult to treat, and we find that the 

 best writers upon poultry diseases insist much more 

 upon prevention than upon cures. The term "chol- 

 era" is applied to a disease which, though it varies 

 in different parts of the country, is everywhere accom- 

 panied by a violent diarrhoea, and is rapidly fatal. In 

 every such outbreak of disease among fowls, the first 

 thing to be done is to separate the sick from the well, 

 and at once give a change of food, which should be of 

 the most nourishing character, and combined with some 

 stimulant, such as Cayenne pepper, or a tonic, like 

 iron. Modern writers upon poultry diseases are greatly 

 in favor of iron in some form as a tonic. The old 

 method of putting rusty nails in the drinking-water had 



