TURKEY RAISING 



to be a valuable precaution to treat them for worms from 

 the start. For this purpose use a mixture composed of 

 two tablespoon fuls of turpentine to a pint of sweet oil. 

 This can be administered to the young poults with a 

 medicine dropper giving them three or four drops to 

 start with and gradually increasing the dose until a whole 

 medicine dropper is used as the poults grow larger. 



Gapes. Gapes are not as troublesome to turkeys as 

 they are to chickens. This is probably largely due to the 

 fact that the turkeys range away from the buildings to a 

 greater degree and are not so likely to pick up the infec- 

 tion. Occasionally, however, gapes do cause trouble and 

 may even be so serious as to make it difficult to raise 

 turkeys. The disease, gapes, is so called from the char- 

 acteristic gaping action of the affected chick or turkey. 

 The disease is due to small forked worms which attach 

 themselves to the lining of the windpipe, causing irrita- 

 tion, and if present in sufficient numbers may even make 

 breathing difficult and result in the weakening and even- 

 tual death of the young bird. Gapes are most apparent 

 and most seriously affect young fowls between the ages of 

 10 days and four weeks. As a rule the larger, stronger, 

 more vigorous youngsters are not seriously affected. The 

 young worms or the eggs from which they come are 

 picked up from the infested soil, and this infection will 

 last from one year to another. The logical and self-evi- 

 dent action to take in case gapes are troublesome is to 

 place the turkey hens with their broods far enough away 

 from the house so that they will be on land which has not 



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