1908.] PUBLIC DOCUMENT — No. 33. 161 



The present owner had built upon this location a poultry 

 plant with a capacity sufficient to handle from fifteen hundred 

 to two thousand birds. This plant consisted of poultry houses, 

 inculjator cellar, brooder houses, coops, etc. Everything about 

 the place, including equipment, was of the latest pattern and 

 of modern construction. The practice was to hatch chickens 

 in incubators and brood them under hens and in brooders. The 

 hens with chicks were kept in coops placed some distance apart 

 in yards. Several small yards were fenced off with wire net- 

 ting, each of Avhich contained a brooder of sufficient size to 

 accommodate from fifty to seventy-five chicks. The disease 

 never made its appearance among any of the adult fowls or any 

 of the young chicks except those brooded in brooders. Those 

 kept with hens in individual coops never contracted the trouble. 

 The mortality among the Ijrooder chicks usually ranged from 

 ninety to one hundred per cent. The loss of from three to five 

 hundred in a season was not an uncommon occurrence. It was 

 extremely rare that a chick once attacked ever recovered. In 

 some lots a few escaped contracting the disease, while others 

 of the same lot succumbed to it. It usually attacked chicks at 

 the age of three weeks, although those older or younger than 

 this were not exempt. 



The first appearaqce of the troul)le was characterized by the 

 development of large serous or water blisters on the front and 

 upper parts of the featherless portions of the legs and feet. 

 After a period of twenty-four to forty-eight hours the blisters 

 would rupture and the serum escape. Frequently the affected 

 parts would he rubljed with the head, and as a result the feath- 

 erless parts of the head would become affected in a similar 

 manner to the feet and legs. An extension of the disease about 

 the head invariably led to an afiection of the eyelids, wliich 

 would become fastened together by the sticky exudate. The 

 ball of the eye was not involved. In some instances the head 

 would first l)ecome affected, later the feet and legs. Occasion- 

 ally it was found that the head or the feet alone would be the 

 only part involved. So far as known, the posterior part of the 

 leg or parts of the body covered with feathers never became 

 aflected. After rupture of the blisters and escape of their con- 

 tents the surface skin became dry and shriveled, after a time 



