211 



Hint something is wrong when one eye of a bird is swollen shut, when 

 it is unable to walk, when its feathers are soiled by a bloody diarrhea 

 discharge, but the good poultryman will discover these troubles and 

 be trying to remedy them long before the birds reach this unfor- 

 tunate condition, and would have removed the sick fowls before they 

 would have had an opportunity to spread the contagion among the 

 whole flock. If you expect to succeed as a poultryman it will pay 

 you to train your eye to detect disease and to know when your fowls 

 show the least sign of being out of condition. 



A sick fowl usually sits humped up, with its head and neck drawn 

 back close to its body or down into its feathers. It remains quiet, 

 and does not move about unless disturbed. The feathers are usually 

 roughed up and stand out from the body. The eyes are often closed 

 and present a sleepy appearance. The comb and wattles will either 

 be dark or very pale. If the bird shows any of the above symptoms, 

 you had better pick it up and examine, and either isolate the bird or 

 keep your eye on it for future developments. 



PREVENTION RATHER THAN CURE. 



You should aim to prevent its occurrence rather than to cure 

 disease. Unless it is a valuable specimen, it seldom pays to doctor a 

 fowl with any really serious ailment. It is all right to give treatment 

 when beneficial results can be obtained by applying treatment to the 

 whole flock, but otherwise, it seldom pays. A cured chicken is a 



menace to the flock and its weak- 

 ness is more or less certain to crop 

 out in the offspring. 



Wright sums up this point very 

 well as follows: "In a large pro- 

 portion of cases of disease, the birds 

 ought to die or be killed. Even 

 where there is no constitutional 

 taint, the fact that they have suc- 

 cumbed to circumstances which have 

 not affected others, marks them out 



liuff Leghorns. , . , . , -. 



as the weakest, which unaided 



Nature would assuredly weed out, and which if we preserve and breed 

 from, perpetuate some amount of that weakness in the progeny. 

 Rheumatism, for instance, can be cured; of that there is no doubt. But 

 the vast majority who have had such success, agree that the effects 

 are either never recovered from as regards strength and vigor, or 

 else that the original weakness continues; and the same may be said 

 of some severe contagious diseases, such as diphtheritic roup, which 

 may affect the strongest. On the other hand, many diseases also ap- 

 parently contagious, and so attacking healthy birds under certain 

 predisposing conditions of exposure or other coincident strain upon 

 the system, do not appear to leave serious results behind them, and 

 are tolerably definite in symptoms and character. It is these which 

 may be most successfully treated, and in which treatment is most 

 worth while where fowls of value are concerned. Hut it is significant 

 that nearly all breeders who rear really large numbers of poultry, 

 gradually come to the conclusion that, except in special cases, with 



