POULTRY DISEASES AND THEIR TREATMENT. IQQ 



after feeding ova to healthy chicks. Wet clay soils are especial- 

 ly favorable to the gape worms, and they thrive best in warm, 

 wet weather. 



Treatment. In eradicating the disease it is important to iso- 

 late all affected birds so that the worms and ova coughed up or 

 voided with the excrement may not be eaten by the other chicks 

 or contaminate the food, drink, and the ground of the runs. 

 Burn the bodies or at least the heads and necks of all dead birds. 

 The feed troughs and water dishes should be scalded and the 

 houses, and coops disinfected. Use potassium permanganate 

 in the drinking water. If possible provide fresh runs on which 

 there has been no poultry for several years. The following par- 

 agraph from Robinson is much to the point : 



"Preventive treatment to be fully effective, seems to require 

 that fowls be kept away from infected ground for several sea- 

 sons. It is said that ground from which poultry is kept for 

 three years, the land meanwhile being sown to grass or culti- 

 vated, will be entirely free from the gape worm. To a poultry 

 keeper whose area of land is small this means moving or keep- 

 ing no poultry for several years. Where land is abundant gape 

 worms can often be avoided by moving the poultry to a plot not 

 recently occupied by them. Treatment to disinfect the soil by 

 destroying the gape worms in it, the object being to continue the 

 poultry on it, is not often profitable." 



The following methods have been recommended for disinfect- 

 ing the ground. It is doubtful if these are economically advis- 

 able. 



Treating the ground with air slaked lime and spading. 



Sprinkling with one of the following solutions : ' 



1 per cent or 2 per cent sulphuric acid. 



2 ounces of copperas dissolved in a pail of water. 



yi ounce of crystals of potassium permanganate to a bar- 

 rel of water. 



The lime or acid treatments are most often recommended. 

 The infected birds should be kept in houses easily cleaned and 

 disinfected and this should be done frequently to prevent re- 

 infection of the recovering birds. Theobald advises an addition 

 of 3 drams of salicylate of soda to each quart of drinking wa- 

 ter to destroy eggs and embryos that may contaminate it. 



The individual surgical method may be profitably practiced 

 in some cases. It seems to be the only sure method yet ad- 



