CHAPTER VIII. 



Tuberculosis. 



Tuberculosis in fowls has long been a serious pest in Europe. 

 Ziirn in his "Krankheiten des Hausgefliigels," published in 1882, 

 devotes several pages to the description of this disease as it 

 occurred in Germany. Its appearance in this country, however, 

 seems to have been much more recent. 



" Salmon, whose book was published about 1888, says that the 

 disease "is by no means rare in the United States if the state- 

 ments of our professional men are to be accepted." However, 

 at that time very little had been clone in the way of bacterio- 

 logical diagnosis and no doubt many of the early reports were 

 unreliable. 



The disease was first reported on the basis of bacteriological 

 examination in 1900 by Pernot (Oregon Agr. Expt. Stat. Bull. 

 64) . • In 1903 Moore and Ward reported investigations on 

 avian tuberculosis in California (Proc. Am. Vet. Med. Assoc. 

 1903). They found "a number of flocks in which the mortality 

 from the disease was very high." Fowl tuberculosis was re- 

 ported from western and central Canada in 1904 by Dr. C. H. 

 Higgins (Dept. of Agr. Canada, 1905). In 1906 it was re- 

 ported from New York and in 1907 from southern Michigan. 

 The disease has been reported in many other places within the 

 last few years. It thus seems certain that the disease is wide- 

 spread throughout the United States and Canada and in the 

 future must be reckoned with by American poultrymen. 



Tuberculosis may exist extensively among fowls, especially 

 in large flocks, and yet not kill enough birds to attract attention 

 to it. Reports show that farmers often lose i or 2 birds a 

 year from what appears to be tuberculosis. In many places the 

 loss seems to be gradually increasing. The existence of the 

 disease in the flock fails to attract the attention of the owner 

 because the losses are so evenly distributed throughout the year. 

 Moore and Ward report a flock of 1400 birds from which 250 

 had died during the first year. Another man lost 300 birds out 



