EPIDEMIOLOGY OF BLACKHEAD IN TURKEYS UNDER APPROXIMATELY NATURAL CONDITIONS

Abstract

The foregoing experiments in outdoor, unprotected enclosures demonstrates the difficulties surrounding the rearing of turkeys. These are discussed from another view-point and to avoid repetition only a few outlying facts should be considered here. The occasional presence of coccidia, the presence of Heterakis papillosa in the ceca, the occurrence of cases of aspergillosis and of chicken-pox in incubator-bred birds which did not come in contact with other domesticated birds, except in a few cases with incubator-bred chickens, show clearly that turkeys are picking up from the ground material deposited by other birds. The agent of blackhead must come from the same sources. The field experiments show a steadily increasing concentration of the infection from 1917 to 1919, even though the ground had been ploughed and seeded before use. As a result, the various groups of turkeys became infected to a greater degree. The growth in the intensity of the disease may be in part ascribed to an accumulation on the soil of infectious agents during any given season after they had been introduced, but it is hardly acceptable as an explanation from season to season, when the soul was either virgin, as regards poultry yards, or ploughed deep and seeded before use. A more rational hypothesis is the gradual attraction of birds in larger numbers and greater variety on account of the food supply in the turkey enclosures and the more intensive cultivation of the land surrounding the laboratory and animal buildings since the beginning of the experiments in 1917. The intensity of the outbreaks due to the confining of young turkeys with birds over a year old which had been infected during the preceding year, or on ground previously occupied by them, was in all instances much greater than in the spontaneous outbreaks. The cases amounted to nearly 100 per cent of the exposed. On the other hand, the number of cases in the control flocks varied and was very low in some groups. It could have been kept down if the sick birds had been promptly removed and not permitted to recover on the same ground. However, the object of the experiment was not to suppress the disease, but to see to what extent it would develop. It is self-evident that the results obtained apply strictly only to that part of the country where the experiments were made. We have at present no means of knowing whether the sources of infection would become more numerous and concentrated with a higher mean annual temperature, or the reverse. Only by using incubator turkeys exclusively for such tests and eliminating the older turkeys and domesticated birds as carriers, can the miscellaneous, at present not controllable sources of the agents of this disease in different localities and the chances of successful rearing be determined.