GOING LIGHT
"Going Light" is the common name for tuberculosis in pigeons. It is brought on by drinking impure water, eating unsound feed, lack of good supply of grit, or from natural lack of vitality. This disease never attacks healthy and vigorous birds, but takes for its victims those which have become weak from any reason. If it is not taken in hand at once, the bird wastes away and becomes nothing but "skin and bones" and dies. The first symptoms are usually diarrhoea, the droppings being thin and watery. The bird does not eat, but sits around with its head drawn down and really starves to death because it has no appetite to eat.
If a bird which has started to go light, is taken in hand at once it is very often possible to save it for future usefulness. Give it a dose of castor oil, giving about five or six drops. Put in a coop by itself and the next day give it ten drops of cod liver oil. Repeat the dose of cod liver oil every day until the bird is cured. Give it hempseed every day and be very certain the seed is sound and free from mustiness. A good health grit or tonic is the best preventive to be used.