Diseases of Farm-Raised Game Birds

DESTRUCTION of the natural environment of upland game birds and ever-increasing pressure for more birds for hunting have led to attempts by conservationists to utilize artificially propagated birds for restocking. Sportsmen and others concerned with the artificial or controlled production of these birds have learned through costly experience that losses from pathological factors are often tremendous. Connections in the rations and in the methods of incubation, breeding, and sanitation have had beneficial effects, but various infectious and parasitic diseases continue to cause extensive mortality and to make game farming unduly hazardous. Some of the maladies observed among artificially propagated stocks are apparently new to veterinary science, but others are familiar diseases acquired from poultry. Permitting domesticated birds to utilize the same range as the game birds and using domesticated hens to incubate game-bird eggs and brood the young are practices that favor the transfer of infections. In Stoddard's book (7)^ on the bobwliite quai), this situation is referred to as follows: