POULTRY NOTES. CAUSES AND EFFECTS OF LIVER DISEASE.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1159, 18 May 1894, Page 5

POULTRY NOTES.

CAUSES AND EFFECTS OF LIVER DISEASE.

Many pod try. keepers are troubled with liver disease amongst their fowls and we are often asked whether an in’ sufficient supply of grit would brine this complaint on. l\ j 3 difficult at times to say what does bring it on, but oui expeiience is that where fowls are kept short of sharp grit there are more cases of liver disease amongst them. We are of opinion, howyver, that badly-ventilated poultry-tmusea have almost as much to do with briimiii,* on, this complaint. Ono thing is certain • when birds with liver disease are allowed to remain in a badly-ventilated house, the other fowls aro almost Bure to take the complaint. It is veiy necessary that the poultryhouse should be well ventilated on account of the egg production. In 8 om&. farmyards we find well-built poujtoyhouses with scarcely any Ventilation/ and the owners get very few ef r * * October to the end of Januaryf T ° m few instances a brick or two ' ' , a left out in the wall to a]> n ? 8 bee l l air to get in, but th*> , , fc 16 { res 1 stuffed up with ha V ' has been We believe * f OV straw ‘ have all our - a fe " - veara w , e 8h . a1 , 1 open front? bullt ,T th riohfc in • '* 80 tbat ie alr can blow fc i a w f on tbe f° w hs, only of course * mUßfc bo r ‘° d . rau g ht * To many L' 1 * little struggling farmers their poultry are almost a living. During the first week in February we called upon no less than thirty poultry-keepers in Lincolnshire, and nearly every one of them said if it was not for their fowls they could not make a living. Nothing checks the fowls* laying more than a badly-ventilated poultryhouse. If a thermometer is put on a high perch in a brick fowl house where a number of birds are kept, on a cold frosty morning, it will register from 55 cleg, to 75 deg., and when the fowls are let out early in the morning, when there may be several degrees of frost, three parts of them are huddled up together in a heap in less than twenty minutes, nipped through with the cold. It is almost as sudden a change for them as a person getting straight out of a warm bed and going out witbnnfc dressing. We have known inuances in which fowls have been slee\>ing in open sheds which are used for the cattle, or as cart sheds, and ‘have been fed in exactly the same wr.y a 8 fowls which slept in a nice wartri house and yet these fowls have produced more eggs than the others. When a hen liaa liver disease and stops laying, the disease begins to develop very fast, and not more than one out of twenty ever lay again after they have once ceaacd* Birds with liver disease may live a week or may be months, and in. Borne cases look quite led in the comb, but the meat on the breast gradually wastes away. On a bitterly cold morning, when the wind is blowing hard, is the time to detect such birds. We have often given the symptoms of liver disease, but as it is prevalent just now, we will refer to them again, briefly. A deep line under the eye, the latter very pale and glassy-looking, instead of being brilliant, and at the same time the bird will often eat more food than a healthy fowl. This is what usually deceives the owner or the attendant; as the birds eat ravenously, nothing wrong is noticed. Wo liave known fowls moping about for months, and never lay an e ß?t and go quite lame in one leg usually the left, but not always. It would be interesting to hear other views on this subject, and instructive to, because liver disease is a serious complaint.—W. Cook, in Farm, Field and Fireside.

1 here is nothing more annoying, or likelv to lead to more confusion, than indistinct addresses. Farmers should note that it is.. more business-like, and that it saves time to