CAUSE AND CURE OF SICKNESS 



173 



Poisoning — For some time I have 

 read your articles and know that you 

 are different from the majority of poul- 

 try writers, in this, that you know what 

 you are writing about. I wish to ask 

 you to please tell me what is ailing a 

 fine White Wyandotte cock I have. He 

 has been ailing about two months. He 

 was just starting in the moult when he 

 commenced looseness of the bowels 

 which I cured, when one evening, as I 

 came to shut them up, I found him on 

 the ground unable to get on the roost ; 

 when I lifted him on the roost he fell 

 as though dizzy and tumbled over and 

 over. Ever since that time he has been 

 getting worse. Now, with the least ex- 

 citement, he will squat on the ground 

 and twist his head and neck entirely 

 around, often with his bill turned 

 straight up. 



Answer — The symptoms you describe 

 are those of ptomaine poisoning. This 

 is caused by bad meat or bad milk or 

 spoilt beef scraps. Also by musty or 

 sooty grain and formaline. The treat- 

 ment is: Give a pill of asafoetida about 

 the size of a pea every night for a week ; 

 for the same length of time put bicar- 

 bonate of soda in the water, about a tea- 

 spoonful to a quart of water; give him 

 some charcoal in the feed and avoid 

 feeding whatever is causing the trouble. 



The preservative which butchers put 

 on the meat acts as a poison and many 

 fine birds have been lost by this without 

 the owners discovering the trouble. It 

 seems to partly paralyze the bird. 



Ptomaine Poison — I am in great trou- 

 ble and come to you for advice. My 

 splendid White Leghorn chickens are 

 dying like flies and I do not know the 

 cause nor what to do for them. 



Today I lost ten and I am afraid I 

 may lose the whole lot of them. I opened 

 several to see if I could find the cause, 

 but they look all right, with the excep- 

 tion of the crop, which has nothing in it 

 but wind or air. The chickens are seem- 

 ingly all right, and suddenly they will 

 He down, put their heads under their 

 bodies, and after a while they will die. 



My chickens have plenty of exercise, 

 lots of green food, grit and running wa- 

 ter. They can run at will all over the 

 ranch, and I feed them some every day. 

 I am putting some pulverized asafoetida 

 in their mash as a disinfectant. My 

 chicken house is new and in good order. 

 —Mrs. K. C. Polasky, 



Answer — Sudden symptoms such as 

 you describe come from poison of some 

 kind which brings on an attack of acute 

 indigestion. The difficulty is to decide 

 what the poison is and where the chick- 

 ens get it. 



I think your chickens, being on free 

 range, are finding and eating putrid ani- 

 mal food of some kind and that they are 

 suffering from ptomaine poison. 



Rotten vegetables or moulded grain 

 or vegetables have the same effect, al- 

 though that is from a fungoid poison. 



The treatment in either case would be 

 about the same. First remove the poi- 

 son from the ranch, look for any dead 

 chicken, bird, gopher, etc., and bury 

 deeply or burn. Continue the asafoetida 

 in the mash, but also add a teaspoonful 

 of castor oil for each chick the first 

 morning, and in every mash for some 

 time to come put powdered charcoal and 

 sulphur, a quarter of a teaspoonful to 

 each chick. 



Poison — I thank you very much for 

 your kind advice. I feed now as you 

 direct me, with fairly good results. The 

 beef scrap, of which I send you a sam- 

 ple, I bought at , and it killed 



my chickens. 



I fed it to different flocks at differ- 

 ent times with the same result and I 

 am positive it is this beef scrap and 

 nothing else that poisoned my chickens. 

 I wonder how many people have lost 

 chickens through these same people who 

 sold to me. Perhaps they sell good 

 scrap sometimes, but this is bad and 

 smells bad. 



What is the best way to feed rabbits 

 to hens? I cannot grind them in a bone 

 cutter, can I? — J. H. 



Answer — The beef scrap that you sent 

 me certainly does not smell at all good. 

 It often occurs in the summer that beef 

 scrap that may have been good earlier 

 in the year has become moist or heated 

 and a poison has developed in it, so in 

 the summer I advise poultry raisers to 

 buy it only in small quantities and try 

 to have it as sweet as possible. 



You know I feared it was the beef 

 scrap and so advised you to use milk 

 and wild game and to avoid the beef 

 scrap. You will have to skin the rabbits 

 or squirrels, and then you can surely 

 grind them up in your bone cutter or rf 

 you cannot, you might hack them up 

 with a hatchet on a block of wood, or 

 vou can boil them and let the hens peck 

 the meat off and then chop the bones up 



