228 POULTRY DISEASES 



bran, and the birds, devouring large numbers of them, became 

 ill, and many of them died. 



Symptoms. — Loss of appetite, black comb, dullness, sitting, 

 moping and unsteady gait, increasing weakness, and death. 

 Judging from the effect of poisonous doses of arsenic on high- 

 er animals, the poisoned birds must have been in considerable 

 pain, but they did not show it; birds do not manifest pain 

 as other animals do. 



Autopsy. — The liver was normal, except that it was a trifle 

 dark in color. There were no noticeable changes in the other 

 abdominal organs, except the intestinal tract. Upon opening 

 the intestines there were noted patches of hemorrhage and 

 areas of congestion and inflammation. 



Treatment. — This is scarcely worth while. Demulcent 

 drinks, as water in which slippery elm bark has been soaked, 

 or even milk, are indicated, after a full dose of castor oil. 



SALT POISONING 



Poisoning among chickens and turkeys from eating common 

 salt or drinking brine is quite common and the losses from it 

 are large. It may occur from eating salt pork, or fish, or from 

 drinking the brine left from freezing ice cream, and in many 

 other ways. The symptoms and treatment vary but little from 

 arsenical and other poisons. 



Dr. Geo. H. Glover, Colorado, reports a case in which a lady in 

 baking a cake made a mistake and used common table salt instead 

 of sugar. After the cake was baked and the mistake discovered the 

 young housewife concluded to feed it to her nice flock of chickens, 

 consisting of twenty-three hens and one rooster. All the birds ex- 

 cept the rooster died. 



It has been determined that twenty-five grains of salt per 

 pound of live weight is sufficient to produce death in birds. 



OTHER MINERAL POISONS 



Saltpeter poisoning, from eating fertilizer; phosphorus poi- 

 soning, from eating rat poison ; lead and zinc poisoning, from 

 eating paint, and copper poisoning, from driking bordeaux 

 mixture, have been described; all are infrequent. 



PTOMAIN POISONING 



Limber neck is one of those convenient generic terms which 

 poultrymen sometimes apply to any ailment in which the bird 

 is too sick to hold up its head. It is a very prominent symp- 

 tom in all forms of ptomain poisoning. 



Cause. — Ptomain poisoning may be due to eating any kind 



