Weekly graphic. [volume] (Kirksville, Adair Co., Missouri) 1880-1949, 1884-08-08
Chl.ken CHOLERA.

This fatal disease among our ilocks
has baffied the skill of nearly all the
scientists and poultry men in the coun.
Try; bur of late years it has been
treated more successfully than former
y. When the fowls are dissected, it
is usually found that the liver is enlarg-
ed, dark green, full ofdark blood, con-
gested, and usually very tender and
easily crushed in the hand. The
gizzard is soft, sometimes much small.
er than natural, and contains half.
digested food. The crop and intes-
tines are often full of sour, fermenting
food, and liberated. The condition
of the liver is tile main thing to be
noted. OF course the brain, nerves
and lungs are more or less congested,
full of darker blood than usual, and the
heart perhaps enlarged. The liver is
not only the organ most changed, but
seems to be the first attacked. 1t
comes suddenly in some cases fowl
well to-day may be dead tomorrow,
and whole flock may be thus rapidly
carried off. The discharges are
thought by some authorities to be de-
cisive. These are mildat first and yell
lowish green, or like sulphur and water.
becoming thinner, greener and more
frothv as the disease goes on The
breathing becomes heavy and fast,
the crop fills with mucus and wind, the
food is not digested, the eyes close,
and in few hour the fowl dies. There
Is weakness, sometimes extreme; the
fowl may not be able to stand well. 1t
does not plume ITSELF and has a gen.
eral sleepy, moping appearance. Alta
later period the dark. thlckened blood
may turn the comb and waffle dark.
There is much fever. great thirst, and
rapid weak pulse. 1t Is highly con.
tagious, and often attacks the whole
flock.
In regard to remedies, there are le-
gions of them. Messrs. Adams &
Brother, the well-known poultry deal
ers of Chicago, who have large
poultry farm at Waukegan, often have
as many as four or five thousand fowls
together at one time. They feared the
disease, and made up their minds to
settle such matter before beginning
too extensively. Whenever they could
procure sick fowl they did so, and
placed 1t in the yard with hundreds of
others. Of course these gentlemen
had no trouble in introducing cholera,
roup and all the diseases to which
chicken flesh is her; but that was ex-
actly what they craved, and they be-
gan to see what they could do under
the circumstances. After fighting the
disease with roup pills and cholera
cures at fifty cents box, they conclud.
ed that doctoring individual chickens
out of thousands did not pay. nor
did pills at such high prices. They
now laugh at cholera and roup. They
found that by combining two ounces
each of rosin, alum, sulpher and red
pepper, and adding it to four quarts of
scalded meal for every twenty-five
fowls, they not only cured the sick
ones, but prevented its spread. For
ioup. they use asafetida, ginger and red
pepper. But they keep their fowls
strictly clean. even washing out the
quarters frequently. They now be-
ileve they can keep as many fowls to-
!. gether as they desire.
1t is recommended that those fowls
that are too sick to eat should receive
pill composed as follows: Blue mass,
ninaty grains. pulverized camphor,
! twenty five grains; cayenne pepper,
thirty grains; pnlverized rhubarb, forty.
eight grains; laudanum. sixty drops.
Mix and make into sixty pills. After a
short while, give half teaspoonful OF
!, castor oil. Feed only soft food until
! the fowls are strong enough to move
about, and put little copperas in the
drinking water.