FOODS POISONOUS TO FOWLS 229 



of food in which putrefaction has set in, but is usually the 

 result of eating decaying meat or tisli. 



Because of the more favorable conditions for the rapid 

 putrefactiton of meat in very hot weather, ptomain poisoning 

 occurs chietly in mid-summer, and on farms w'here the fowls 

 have an extended range, including patches of high weeds that 

 effectually conceal dead animals from the caretaker, until the 

 loss of a large portion of the tiock compels cutting weeds and 

 a diligent search for the carcass. 



The beginning of ptomain poisoning in a flock is usually 

 something like this : During very hot weather a bird dies in 

 the tall weeds, it may be from disease or from violence, and 

 in three or four days its carcass is filled wdth maggots and 

 in an advanced stage of decomposition; it is found by the 

 other birds and devoured, with the consequent death of many 

 of them, some of them dying in out of the w^ay places and 

 remaining undiscovered by the keeper, and in turn poisoning 

 others, and so on. 



Oftentimes the keeper is responsible for the beginning of 

 the trouble by thoughtlessly throwing some small animal 

 which he has killed (opossum, w^easel, rat, etc.) where the 

 fowis find it. If the w^eather conditions are favorable to rapid 

 decomposition, ptomain poisoning in the flock wall result and 

 the "vermin" dead will destroy more birds than ten of its 

 kind would destroy during life. 



Maggots are usually found in the crops of birds dying from 

 eating putrid flesh, and if the poultryman holds autopsies on 

 the dead birds, he is quite apt to conclude that the maggots 

 have killed them. Such is not the case. 



Treatment. — Give a tablespoonful of castor oil and one- 

 fifth grain doses of sulphate of strychnin, the latter every 

 four to six hours. 



Experiments have been conducted to determine the exact 

 dosage of strychnin for an average-sized hen. It has been 

 found that the dose should be from one-sixth to one-fifth of a 

 grain three times a day. The author has given one grain re- 

 peatedly without ill effect, but when given in solution and on 

 an empty crop it killed the bird. 



BOTULISM 

 (Limber Neck) 



Dickson has recently reported the results of several outbreaks 

 of botulism among persons and the same condition among fowls 

 where they had eaten some of the same kind of meat. In one 

 case fifty fowls were affected after eating home-canned corn which 

 had caused the death of a woman who had tasted it. In another 

 case betw^een fifty and one hundred fowls became paralyzed and 



