Symptoms. There are loss of appetite, swelling of the abdomen, profuse diarrhœa, the fæces yellowish in color and containing mucopurulent matters and blood. The disease may prove fatal in a few days without much loss of flesh, but if protracted it leads to extreme anæmia, emaciation and debility and the animal dies in marasmus.
Diagnosis is always to be certified by the profusion of coccidia found in the fresh liquid discharges.
Prevention must be secured if possible by the removal of the healthy rabbits from the infected and from the hutch or warren in which the latter have been. The greatest care must be taken to prevent them from obtaining access to the droppings of the sick, or to streams, ponds or wells, into which the drainage from such manure can have found its way. The safest course is to destroy the sick and burn up them and all their droppings, as the latter ground into powder can blow on the wind.
Therapeutic treatment has proved unsatisfactory but may be attempted along the same lines as for the larger animals.
COCCIDIAN ENTERITIS IN BIRDS. INTESTINAL COCCIDIOSIS.
Two sporozoa are known to be pathogenic in the intestines of birds: the coccidium tenellum and the gregarina avium intestinalis.
Coccidium Tenellum. This has a nearly globular body 21 to 25 mm. long by 17 to 19 mm. broad, a very thin, delicate investing membrane, and has been found in the mucosa of the cæca of birds, producing a fatal typhlitis. The sporoblasts are developed in water outside the animal body and when taken in with the food colonize in the intestinal mucosa.
Gregarina Avium Intestinalis. When mature this is in form of a granular body with hollow spaces or utricles, is oval, or globular and measures 40 to 48 μ in diameter. The spores are 11 to 14 μ. They are found in the submucosa of the intestines in chickens, being taken in with food or water, and attack not the intestines only but the skin, the buccal and pharyngeal mucosa and even the liver and lungs. They traverse the mucous membrane and become encysted in the submucosa as white isolated or confluent points, disturbing the circulation and nutrition and destroying the nutritive and other functional activities of the mucosa.
Lesions. From the coccidium tenellum these are mainly found in the cæca and consist in intense inflammation, white lines formed by the parasitic colonies, desquamations of the epithelium and erosions and ulcers. In the early stages and in the absence of diarrhœa there may be simply thickening and induration of the mucous membrane and whitish colonies of the parasites. When there has been diarrhœa the contents are serous, or seropurulent, brick red, and filled with epithelial cells, red globules, leucocytes, fat globules and coccidia.
The gregarinæ are not confined to the cæca but scattered over the whole intestinal canal as white spots in the submucosa surrounded by congestion and degenerative changes. It has been found complicated with false membranes.