Chick rearing: V. The influence of diet on epidemic bacillary white diarrhoea (pullorum disease)

Abstract

Evidence is presented, based on feeding tests, that at Hanns Hall Farm it has been impossible to control bacillary white diarrhoea of chicks (pullorum disease) by blood testing when foods of c. 20% protein content have been fed as the sole diet of chicks.Evidence is presented, based on feeding tests, that at Hanns Hall Farm epidemic bacillary white diarrhoea (pullorum disease) has occurred in brother chicks when fed foods of c. 20% protein content and that epidemic bacillary white, diarrhoea has not occurred in sister chicks which have been fed crushed oats for the first 72 hr. and thereafter have been fed a diet of c. 14% protein intake.Evidence is presented, based on feeding tests, that at Hanns Hall Farm epidemic bacillary white diarrhoea (pullorum disease) not only did not occur in sister chicks in which B. pullorum had been demonstrated to be present in one of their number, but also epidemic bacillary white diarrhoea failed to develop despite the lack of hygienic precautions when these chicks had been placed in an uncleansed brooder from which the survivors of a severe epidemic of this disease had just been removed, and when they were brooded adjacent to chicks which suffered severe mortality from the disease, thereby undergoing all the chances of infection by wide dissemination of B. pullorum within a small area.