102 POULTRY DISEASES 



mulcent drinks, as water in which slippery elm 

 bark has been soaked, or even milk, are indicated, 

 after a full dose of castor oil. 



Salt Poisoning.— Poisoning among chickens and 

 turkeys from eating common salt or drinking 

 brine is quite common and the losses from it are 

 large. It may occur from eating salt pork, or fish, 

 or from drinking the brine left from freezing ice 

 cream, and in many other ways. The symptoms 

 and treatment vary but little from arsenical and 

 other poisons. 



Dr. Geo. H. Glover, Colorado, reports a case in ■which a 

 lady In baking a cake made a mistake and used common 

 table salt instead of sugar. After the cake was baked and 

 the mistake discovered the young housewife concluded to 

 feed it to her nice flock of chickens, consisting of twenty- 

 three hens and one rooster. All the birds except the rooster 

 died. 



It has been determined that twenty-five grains of 

 salt per pound of live weight is sufficient to pro- 

 duce death in birds. 



Other Mineral Poisons.— Saltpeter poisoning, 

 from eating fertilizer ; phosphorus poisoning, from 

 eating rat poison, lead and zinc poisoning, from 

 eating paint, and copper poisoning, from drinking 

 bordeaux mixture, have been described; all are 

 infrequent. 



Ptomain Poisoning.— Limber neck is one of those 

 convenient generic terms which poultrymen some- 

 times apply to any ailnient in which the bird is too 

 sick to hold up its head. It is a very prominent 

 symptom in all forms of ptomain poisoning. 



Cm«se.— Ptomain poisoning may be due to eating 

 any kind of food in which putrefaction has set in, 

 but is usually the result of eating decaying meat 

 or fish. 



Because of the more favorable conditions for 

 the rapid putrefaction of meat in very hot weather, 



