6 
Colorado Experiment Station 
experience. The year after that she moved away and during 1918 
a new tenant took the place. A considerable amount of the ground 
in the immediate vicinity of the house was plowed with the result 
that only a few chickens were affected. Since that time there has 
been no trouble on that place. 
In another instance the house was located not 50 feet above an 
irrigating ditch and on many days the chickens, of course, ran down 
across the ditch. The disease developed in one brood, with the loss 
of all but two chickens, including the old hen. Mrs. George William 
Day of Orchard, Colorado, informed us in 1918 that she had lived 
on the place occupied at that time for six years and that she had 
the disease every year but one, that one being a year when she had 
raised the chickens entirely under cover and consequently both in 
the shade and off the sod. Experiments seem to point conclusively 
to the association of the disease with sod. 
It seemed to us that there was a strong probability that the 
disease was infectious, if not contagious, and as a consequence we 
attempted several times to isolate an organism which might have 
some association with the malady, but always with negative results. 
We did in one case isolate two separate organisms, one a coccus and 
another a bacillus, but neither would produce the disease on inocula- 
tion. In most all of our cases the cultures remained sterile when 
made from the material within the vesicles. In several instances, Ave 
removed the vesicular content with a sterile hypodermic syringe 
and inoculated it under the skin of the feet of healthy chickens, Avith 
negative results. In at least three different instances, Ave placed 
Ihe scabs have piled up and the ends of two of the toes have dropped off, making? 
walking- very difficult. 
