CHICKEN CHOLERA.

Temuka Leader, Issue 1705, 1 March 1888, Page 3

CHICKEN CHOLERA.

The following letter signed " HenTrife' : ' appears in a Wairarapa ■p*pW*~r ■■.:■■■ 1 »f Sir,*-! want to ask you a riddle—- ; Why is it necessary to buy chicken cholera frotii' Johnny Crepaud, and giye Him £2500 for it, when we have plenty of first -class chicken cholera of our own production ? To enable the .. Government to save the money I am . quite prepared to give as much chicken cholera as they have need for. I will, : if asked to do so,, send half-a-dozen dead fowls to any Government officer who wishes to experiment with them, and a little inquiry in the neighbour- "" hbod' would soon procure a regular supply. ; .Nor need there be any fear of the disease attacking other domestic animals or human beiriga, for if there " had been any danger of this it would have shown itself long ago, the disease Being only too common among fowls in this district for two or three years past. In August, 1886, the disease first appeared among my poultry. At that time I had some fifty fowls and I# ducks shut up together in a run enclosed with wire netting. In one week I lost 32 fowls, and in three weeks -' not one fowl was left alive. lor nine weeks'or more I had no fowls; then, • having carefully whitewashed the and spread the run with lime Ihd sulphur, I bought a few fowls and reared a. number of chicks, but the; disease came back, and the chicks '■: when nearly full grown died off two or three a day, till again not one was left. But although the fowls died off : in this way the ducks were left un- ' touched. Shut up in the same run, Hying under the same conditions, and v exposed to the same contagion, the ducks escaped the disease altogether, ■--•■ and lam satisfied that whatever the , cholera niight do to rabbits it will in way hurt ducks.