TURKEY RAISING 



droppings is often a bright yellow but may vary from 

 white to brown. It is on opening up the body of a dead 

 turkey that one is able to find the conditions which are 

 characteristic of the disease. This is evidenced by one or 

 both of the caeca or "blind guts" being enlarged and 

 plugged full of a cheesy material. In addition, the liver is 

 likely to be more or less enlarged and to show yellowish 

 or yellowish green spots on its surface. 



There is a considerable difference of opinion as to 

 what may be the cause of blackhead. In the opinion of 

 some turkey raisers and others who have studied this 

 matter it is simply the fact that the turkey is not easily 

 adapted to domestication and that unless the greatest care 

 is taken in selecting strong healthy breeding stock and 

 giving the birds proper management and allowing them 

 free range, they are likely to develop this diseased condi- 

 tion. Another theory lays the cause of the disease to a 

 parasitic protozoan called an amoeba which exists in the 

 digestive tract of the bird and is discharged from the body 

 with the excrement, in this way infecting other birds by 

 being taken into the body with the food or drink. A 

 third theory holds that the disease is caused by another 

 kind of protozoan organism known as flagellates. These 

 occur in the intestines of practically all turkeys but give 

 rise to the trouble which is evidenced as blackhead only 

 when the circumstances under which the turkeys live are 

 unfavorable and lead to digestive conditions in the intes- 

 tines such that the flagellates find conditions suitable for 

 their multiplication. Many of them then penetrate the 



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