Verminous Trachea- Bronchitis. The Gapes in Birds. 401 



England, and Megnin that it has destroyed 1 200 young pheasants 

 daily in the hatching establishment at Rambouillet. 



Prevention. For the older birds a change of run will greatly 

 diminish the number of parasites harbored. 'For the young- birds, 

 hatched out in the incubator, keep on a poultry house floor until 

 well fledged. Give them no water until it has been boiled and 

 no green food from an adjacent or suspected soil. I have known 

 hundreds of chickens raised safely in one year on a farm, where 

 the previous year all had perished out of doors with ' ' gapes. ' ' 

 For the whole flock the following are important prophylactic mea- 

 sures : Sprinkle the runs with gas-lime and camphor, soak the 

 runs or floors with a strong solution of common salt, or sprinkle 

 with carbolic acid, kerosene, sulphuric acid solution (1:100) or 

 salicylic acid solution (1:100). Washout drinking and feeding 

 dishes twice daily and treat them with one of the above solutions. 

 Boil all water and green food before supplying it. Salicylic acid 

 (1:100) or rue or garlic in the drinking water destroys the em- 

 bryos taken in. The carcases of dead birds must be burned or 

 boiled, and the houses and runs must be kept scrupulously clean, 

 to prevent the ingestion of expectorated worms. Wild birds 

 that are likely to harbor the parasite must be as far as possible 

 excluded from the houses and runs. 



Treatment. A number of worms may be extracted by a 

 feather stripped of all its plumules except a mere tuft at the tip, 

 or better by a stiff horse hair doubled upon itself and twisted up 

 so as to form a fine loop. This is pas-sed into the opening of the 

 trachea in the centre of the root of the tongue, and, when well 

 down, turned around several times and withdrawn, when one or 

 more worms will usually be found attached to it. This may be 

 repeated at intervals until the bird appears to be permanently re- 

 lieved. To render this more effectual the extractor is sometimes 

 dipped in camphorated spirit, tobacco solution, oil of turpentine, 

 salicylic acid solution, sulphurous acid solution, olive oil, salt so- 

 lution or other non-irritating vermicide. It must not be pushed 

 too urgently, nor continued too persistentlv at one time, as the 

 young bird is very easily asphyxiated. 



Cobbold rendered the bird insensible by a drop of chloroform, 

 and slit up the trachea and extracted the worms with forceps. 

 26 



