Preventing meningitis caused by parasites

[AlohaSteven]

...do the chickens have some kind of antibody agaist this awful disease that the slugs carry around?

It might actually be diseases, plural, for which the slugs & snails are potentially vectors of transmission to humans ...and a darn good question, Devany. My offhand guess is the birds are too dissimilar from mammals for the helminths to be successful in them or for the bacteria to infect 'em, since there does not appear to be a big pathology problem for domestic poultry stemming from rat lungworm and/or leptospirosis*, but this is just a guess. Dinosaurs never really died out, they just grew feathers and flew away; because birds developed from reptiles on a way different branch of the evolutionary tree than did mammals, with parasites generally evolving along with their hosts, these invertebrate-mammal parasites may not be physiologically able to jump across the huge phylogenetic gap to birds (unlike the flu virus). I'll see if I can find anything on that.

Folks with long experience raising chickens (and ducks, peafowl, Guinea fowl, etc) under various conditions in Puna, what have you observed in the way of morbidity and mortality amongst birds feeding on slugs and snails?

mella 1, here is a link for you to the Mosquito Control & Mosquito-borne Disease thread: http://www.punaweb.org/Forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=4412 -encouraging news, that tidbit you shared!


Edited to include this caveat: *While unconvinced by the evidence I've seen so far that lepto is passed by the snails and their kin, as per the discussion over in the mongoose thread, I'd agree it is better to assume a potential problem and be wrong than ignore a potential problem and be wrong. So, until established otherwise, there remains question about a snail/slug-lepto connection. In practical effect this changes little to nothing in how we need to behave with regard to them because of the definite presence of infective rat lungworm larvae: tools, gloves, and washing after contact.

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"Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence."

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