W. H. Workman—Gapes and its Treatment



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GAPES AND ITS TREATMENT


By W. H. Workman


Have any ofiour members been troubled with this nasty disease

amongst their birds, which is caused by a Nematode by the name of

Syngamus trachealis ? If so my experience and the way we cure it may

be of use to some reader who like myself has had a few losses. The

symptoms are that one notices the affected bird coughing as if it would

choke to death. This is caused by one or more of these horrid thread¬

worms which have made a home in the trachea or windpipe and have

settled there to breed. In a short time there will be a family of them

and the bird will die from suffocation. We dissected a Californian

Quail-which died from this worm, finding the worms in the windpipe.

My man asked me to get him some “ gapes powder ” so as to be ready

in case of another bird being attacked. Sure enough the next victim

was a very fine Pagoda Starling and this is how we treated him with

first-class results. We put him in a box cage, covered the front with

a stout bag, put some of the gapes powder in a little dish inside the

cage. Then we gave the powder two or three vigorous blasts with a

bicycle pump till we had what we call in Ireland “ a proper stour ”,

which means a thick fog of powder in the cage. We kept the bag

down and allowed the bird to breathe this atmosphere for about

fifteen minutes for about four days, then gave a dose alternate days,

and in a little over a week the bird was completely cured and we put

it back with its mates in the aviary. The powder is very fine, light

grey in colour, and smells strongly of naphthalene : it is called “ Kuride ”

and seems to work well.


So much for the cure ; now as regards prevention. Poultry keepers

when they get gapes amongst their stock shift their pens to fresh

ground, but this is impossible with fixed aviaries, so one has to resort

to other methods. I have very thoroughly limed my ground with

well-slaked, in fact dead, quicklime and this so far seems to have been

quite effective. I also understand that a sprinkling of common salt

is another good preventative ; it could be sowed on with a little dry

sand as one does weed killers.


One theory regarding the life history of these Nematodes is that



