CHAPTER XL 



Internal Parasites. 



Fowls are often seriously infested with internal parasites. 

 The most important of these are various worms living in the 

 alimentary canal. In popular usage these are spoken of simply 

 as "worms." Various other internal parasites as the gape 

 worm, the air sac mite, etc., are described in other sections of 

 this book. The present discussion will be confined to intes- 

 tinal worms. 



Regarding these Robinson says : "Worms in small quantities 

 inhabit the digestive organs of all fowls and animals without 

 causing them serious inconvenience. It is even maintained by 

 some authorities that in limited numbers these parasites are 

 beneficial, though in just what way they are beneficial I have 

 never seen stated, and it seems more reasonable, in the present 

 state of knowledge of the subject, to claim no more than that 

 when not too numerous they do no perceptible harm. Worms 

 are contagious in that they are transmitted from fowl to fowl, 

 probably always indirectly by being deposited on the ground by 

 one fowl and taken from it by another ; but if it is true as stated 

 that worms in small numbers are always present, contagion is 

 not required to account for their increase to troublesome num- 

 bers in many members of a flock simultaneously. The more 

 reasonable assumption in the premises is that all these fowls 

 alike were in a condition favorable to an excessive development 

 of the parasites. This is a phase of the question on which the 

 literature of the subject has done nothing — yet it seems to be 

 the all-important point to determine." 



Diagnosis of Worms in General. — Accurate diagnosis of 

 worms in the intestines can be made only by finding the worms 

 in the droppings of the fowls. Fowls affected with worms to 

 any great extent frequently show the general symptoms of dull- 

 ness and depression. Birds that are suspected of being affected 

 with worms should be shut up in a coop and given a dose of 



