Treatment of a Common Cold.
Blackhead starts from a common cold. When you have a bird in your flock afflicted with a cold, place a small teaspoonful of Epsom Salts to one gallon of water. Do this three or four days in succession and put plenty of lime around your turkey houses. I put lime on the droppings boards every day; it will kill the disease in no time and do no injury to the turkey. Of course I put clean straw in my turkey house in damp weather every other day as the straw becomes damp and is very liable to breed disease.
Give this Epsom Salts treatment in the hot weather whether the birds show symptoms of disease or not. It keeps their blood cool and avoids the tendency to disease.
The time for blackhead season is in what is commonly called “dog days,” that is, mid-summer. The weather is heavy and dark and is very injurious to young turkeys. That is the time you must keep your coops good and dry and give plenty of green stuff, with aconite in the drinking water about twice a week to keep down any fever. Three drops in a pint of water is all I give them as aconite is very poisonous. If you have any sting nettle at the time be sure to feed it, as sting nettle is one of the greatest aids to success in raising young turkeys.
When the turkey dies of blackhead the crop becomes apparently black and inflamed, and is very foul. The liver is enlarged, and has white or yellowish spots all over it. In some places it has the appearance of being eaten away. Underneath the liver, next to the back of the bird and around the heart you will find a brownish substance, just the same as you would find in a person who dies from peritonitis. You will also find in what is called the second stomach, that is, the bowel leading to the gizzard, a large core. Sometimes this will be very dark brownish yellow or ochre color, mingled with blood. This core forms a stoppage, and unless it is removed, is certain death for the turkey.
I have had turkeys die with what is commonly called in human beings, “appendicitis”, as the appendix was matterated and badly swollen. In fact, in a bad case of blackhead all the bowels of the turkey become swollen. The gizzard is twice its natural size, the abdomen becomes swollen and black and the odor is very obnoxious. In a bad case of this kind there is nothing that can be done, the disease having become too far advanced, and that is why one ought to watch turkeys very closely. If the turkey is taken in time and Margaret Mahaney’s pills given, and the turkey is kept warm, (for they will take the disease first with a chill just the same as a human being would take malaria) there is no need of any loss in the flock from blackhead. All the colleges of agriculture have diagnosed the case as a parasite on the intestines, but I have thoroughly investigated that theory, and wish to say that I have found no grounds for such a belief.