A New and Effective Method of Treating Canary-Pox

Abstract

Canary-pox is a variety of fowl-pox, and is capable of causing very severe loss to those who raise canaries or other small birds. Fowl-pox inflicts considerable losses on poultrymen each year, both because of the deaths it causes and the reduction in egg-laying by affected birds. Up to the present there has been no effective treatment for any variety of the disease, although temporary immunization of chickens is possible.

In canaries the pox is highly fatal, the mortality being almost 100%, and also highly contagious. The disease occurs in 2 or possibly 3 forms. In one the earliest indication is a small swelling of the marginal epithelium about the eyes. This rapidly increases in size until within 3 or 4 days the eye is completely closed, and then continues to spread until death occurs which is usually within a week or 10 days. Or a similar nodule may appear about the nostrils, or at the angles of the mouth, and run a rather similar course.

In other canaries the first indication of the disease appears when the bird begins to gasp, and here the fatal outcome of the infection is often even more prompt. Occasionally birds are also seen with scaly or warty growths about the toes and legs, but although this is said to be a manifestation of the same disease, and is frequently associated with epidemics in which cases of the two first-mentioned types are numerous, it runs a much slower course. But here, too, the bird eventually dies, though not perhaps for some weeks or months. In the meantime the claws and even the toes are frequently lost, and the bird becomes unable to perch. Apparently few studies of canary-pox have so far been made, the only ones known to the authors being those of Kikuth and Gollub, 1 Burnet, 2 and Reis and Nobrega. 3