No study has been hitherto reported as regards the parasitic nodular typhlitis in chickens due to heterakid worms, though a considerable number of works has been made on the same lesion in pheasants by Lucet & Henry, Klee, Railliet, Letulle et Marotel, Schwartz and others.
Having examined six-hundred and twenty specimens of the chicken intestines taken from various poultry yards for other experimental purposes during past five years, I have found many larger and smaller helminthic nodules in the coecal wall of eighty specimens of them. The larger nodules, varing in size from a linseed to a pea, were found in the subserous and muscular coats, and not in the submucosa of the coeca in few specimens. These nodules could be detected easily with the naked eye from the outside of the coeca. By closer examination a caseous or calcareous degenerated part was seen in the centre of the nodules.
Each nodule was demonstrated to have contained single or several heterakid worms in various stages of the development.Many of the worms extracted from these nodules showed that they were appearently fully grown, but not yet sexually matured. In one of such nodules, seven specimens of fully developed mature worms were contained and determined to be
Heterakis vesicularis.
Judging from the discovery of various stages of the worms from the coecal nodules and from the enlarged cavities of the coecal glands, it may be concluded that some of early-stage larvae might have penetrated the mucosa from the coecal glands and encysted in the muscular layer where they continued to grow and attained their sexual maturity.
The smaller nodules were found in the submucosa of the coeca of many specimens and were remarked to have the similar construction to those of the nodules due to the larvae of
Ascaridia perspicillum which were discovered previously by the author in the muscular layer of the small intestine. About 12.1% of the chickens examined, were more or less affected with this nodular disease. The number of nodules found in a coecum counted one to twenty. Each nodule contained single specimen of a larval nema, measuring about 1mm. in length.
No difference was remarked between the larval worms in the coecal nodules and those in the nodules of the small intestine, and in my feeding expriments with the embryonated eggs of
Heterakis vesicularis to chickens, such parasitic nodules could not be produced.
From the fact above mentioned it can be said that both larval worms may be identical. It is highly probable that a part of the larvae of
Ascaridia perspicillum after hatching in the muscular stomach of the chickens undergo their further development in the lumen of the small intestine and some of the larvae especially in the winter season, penetrate the wall of the small intestine and are embedded there making the parasitic nodules and the remained part of them enter the coeca to produce the same nodular lesion in the submucosa.
Development of
Heterakis vesicularis. A series of young chickens were used in the study of the development of
Heterakis vesicnlaris.
These chickens were fed on the ripe infective eggs of this worm and after a period of from thirty-six hours to two months the chickens were examined postmortem to observe the state of the development of the worms. By carefully examining the contents of the coeca successive stages in the development of the larvae were obtained.
Within thirty-six hours after feeding of the eggs most of them hatched in the muscular stomach and a few freed larvae were found in the coeca, and on the examination of the chickens killed on the fourth day and thereafter, the young worms were seen in a large number in the coeca. But in many instances a few larvae still remained in the deep part of the mucosa of the small intestine, without producing nodules there for a long time.
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