256 THE POULTRY-BOOK. 



being turned round, will loosen and destroy a number of small 

 red worms, some of which will be drawn up by the feather, 

 and others will be coughed up by the chicken. The operation 

 should be repeated the following day, if the gaping continues. 

 If it ceases, the cure is effected. 



There can be little doubt that this troublesome disease is 

 caused by inattention to cleanliness in the habits and lodgings 

 of fowls. An intelligent and lucid writer in the Southern 

 Planter says, " The worms in the lungs of chickens are pro- 

 duced by the inhalation of the eggs of the hen-lice. The 

 minute eggs are deposited in the feathers and down of the hen, 

 and the chickens being hovered over by the hen, the eggs are 

 drawn into the cells of the lungs, at each inspiration, which 

 hatch and produce the worms which smother the chickens. "' 

 Mr. C. F. Morton, of New Windsor, also says : " There is 

 one fact connected with this disease that it is only old hen- 

 roosts that are subject to it ; and I am of opinion that when it 

 prevails, if the chicken-houses and coops were kept clean, and 

 frequently whitewashed with thin whitewash, with plenty of 

 salt or brine mixed with it, and those chickens that take the 

 disease operated on and cured, or, if they should die, have 

 them burned up, or so destroyed that the eggs of the worms 

 would not hatch out, that the disease would be eradicated. 



With my first brood of chickens, there was not one escaped 

 the gapes. But all that have been hatched since I had the 

 chicken-house and coops well whitewashed, inside and out, with 

 thin whitewash, with plenty of brine in it, and kept clean, have 

 been exempt from the disease, with occasionally an exception 

 of one or two chickens out of a brood." 



Mr. Benjamin Anderson, in the Southern Planter, states that 

 some of his neighbors have entirely prevented this disease, by 

 mixing a small quantity of spirits of turpentine with the food 

 of their fowls. " From five to ten drops, to a pint of meal, to 



