The Sterilization of Eggs Infected with Salmonella Pullorum

Abstract

The common practice of feeding non-fertile incubator eggs to chicks and adult fowls has produced so many severe outbreaks of speticemic “Salmonella pullorum Disease” (Bacillary White Diarrhea) that it is of considerable economic importance. Jones1 reported an outbreak in adult fowls which produced a mortality of seven percent. Mathews2 noted an abnormal increase in the percentage of reacting birds in a breeding flock. “This flock numbered 349 birds; 285, or about 85 percent, gave positive reactions to the agglutination test. All of the birds, except pullets, had been tested the previous year. Only 5 per cent had reacted, and these birds had been removed.” Upon investigation, he found that non-fertile eggs had been fed. “The possibility that some of these eggs were infected with Bact. pullorum offered the only logical explanation for this unusual increase in the percentage of reacting birds.” He reported two other similar outbreaks, one of which .