Blackhead In Turkeys Research Articles

Production of fatal blackhead in Turkeys by feeding with embryonated eggs of heterakis papillosa

Production of fatal blackhead in Turkeys by feeding with embryonated eggs of heterakis papillosa

The Warfare Against Black-head

In the last paper which the writer presented before the Society it was pointed out that blackhead of turkeys is not an infectious or a communicable disease, but a disease of captivity. That yard infection and transmission from poult to poult, or from chick to poult, must be regarded as myths, without the least experimental evidence behind them. What then are the obstacles in the past toward successful turkey raising?I. Improper FeedingThere are five great obstacles in the path of the turkey raiser: 1. Improper feeding; 2. Improper housing; 3. Exposure to wet and cold; 4. Improper range conditions; 5. Lice and other parasites. If these difficulties could be simultaneously removed, raising turkeys would be as easy as raising chickens. Of the mortality in growing stock, due to each of these causes, the percentages may be reckoned something follows: improper feeding, 50; improper housing, 12; exposure, 25; improper…

Blackhead in Turkeys: A New Conception of the Nature of the Disease and Suggestions for New Methods in Prophylactic Feeding

Notwithstanding the inestimable advantages that have followed the conception of the germ-theory of disease, the energetic application of this theory in an a priori sense has sometimes served to retard rather than to advance the progress of events toward the solution of the etiological problems involved.This has been especially true of blackhead in turkeys. Since the time when the parasitic bodies were first discovered by Theobald Smith in the cecal and liver tissues, the conception of their specificity and of the marked communicability of the disease through their agency has been held by all investigators, with a perfectly natural tenacity. We have been fearful of infecting other stock from turkeys sick with the disease; we have proclaimed against the mixing of ordinary hens, bearers of infection with the young poults; we have dreaded the assured possibility of “yard infection.” In our experimental work we have attempted by all possible …