Abstract
The authors provide a relatively concise account of poultry diseases with particular attention to chickens, turkeys, and ducks. The fifth edition includes a new chapter on diseases of game birds as well as updated information on poultry husbandry practices in the United Kingdom. The strength of the book is the detail provided for performing vaccinations, investigating field disease outbreaks, and understanding poultry welfare issues in the United Kingdom. Additionally, an appendix provides a random collection of physiologic and hematologic data on various poultry species, lists housing parameters (e.g., lighting, feed and water, stocking densities), and provides directions on fumigation. Several chapters have a rather limited number of references; for example, the chapter on infectious coryza contains only one reference, and most references were published at least 10 years prior to the book's publication date (2002). Photographs (black and white) are rare (67 total), of varying quality, and are inconsistently placed throughout the text. Previous editions had included a small number of color photographs. Pathologists will find the text to be woefully lacking in histopathology microphotographs and gross lesion photos, although written descriptions of these entities, including comments on pathogenesis, are included to a varying degree. New editions of this text are produced approximately every 6–7 years, which makes it difficult to remain current on recently emerging diseases such as West Nile virus or the concern about potential human pandemics associated with H5N1 avian influenza virus. In summary, this text is best suited for a veterinarian or student looking for applied information on the recognition of clinical signs, treatment, and management of poultry disease, while the pathologist should use other texts, such as Diseases of Poultry (Y. M. Saif, ed.), to observe photographs of gross and histopathologic lesions of poultry diseases. Poultry Diseases serves as a good, practical secondary text for any poultry medical library.