"WHITE DIARRHOEA" IN BROODER CHICKS 



This is a disease which rarely attacks chickens hatched and 

 raised by hens, and therefore it must be caused either by faulty 

 incubators or wrong "mothering." 



We all know that at times quite a number of chicks in a brooder 

 will be "stuck up behind/' as it is sometimes called ; how they run 

 about with their shoulders up, looking wizened and old ; how they 

 try to huddle near the warmth and finally give up the hopeless 

 struggle and die. 



"I think my chicks are taking some disease and dying from an 

 epidemic," said a lady, who, though a novice with incubators and 

 brooders, was an old and most successful poultry woman with hens. 

 These chicks had been overheated in the incubator I discovered 

 two days after hatching. 



Another friend, a very clever surgeon, told me one chilly night 

 his incubator lamp went out and all the eggs got stone cold. His 

 wife could not bear to think of losing all those nice eggs after hav- 

 ing watched them for nearly three weeks, so she advised lighting 

 up again in hopes of saving some. This they did, and were re- 

 warded with fifty nice, lively chicks, but in a few days they com- 

 menced to die; they were "stuck up behind," or they shivered and 

 seemed quite thirsty, and at last, when only fifteen were left, he 

 made some post mortem examinations, and he found the yolk of 

 the egg, which is drawn up into the bowel cavity the last day of 

 incubation, was still there, only it looked in some like a bit of rub- 

 ber, in some like hard-boiled eggs, and again in others it was dark 

 and putrid. Instantly he reasoned that it was that yolk that was 

 killing the chicks by blood poisoning. 



He had only fifteen left, but he decided to experiment on them, 

 so he opened them ; his wife begged him to give them chloroform, 

 which I believe he did, and he removed the toughened yolk, sewed 

 up the wound, fed them lightly and all of the patients recovered and 

 lived to maturity. 



It was a delicate operation, but my friend had the skillful hand 

 of a trained surgeon. I never attempted it myself, but have made 

 many a sad post mortem on little chicks dying from being "stuck 

 up behind," for I make it a rule to hold "post mortems" on all sub- 

 jects that die in my yards. 



One time a whole incubator of eggs 240 were overheated by a 

 meddlesome child playing with the regulator. Two days later 117 

 hatched, the others were cooked hard. Every one of the 117 died, 

 although some lived to be eleven days old. I did everything I 

 could think of to save them (except the surgical operation), but 

 lost all. 



I feel sure that either overheating or chilling so weakens the 

 bowels that they cannot digest, or, rather, assimilate the egg, and 

 that the yolk putrifies and causes blood poisoning; and that either 

 overheating in the brooder or chilling before the chicks are a week 

 old will have the same result. Also if the chicks are fed too soon 



