JVME v21n2: The Health of Poultry


Volume 21, Number 2 Fall, 1994

The Health of Poultry

M. Pattison, (Ed). Longman Group UK Ltd, Distributed in U.S. and Canada
by Iowa State University Press, Ames, IA 50014-8300. 1993, 277 pp.


The editor states in his preface that the purpose of this book is not to categorize poultry diseases and their causal organisms but rather to describe the overall concept of poultry health and to demonstrate the interrelationships between husbandry, medicine and nutrition in the prevention and treatment of disease. Each of the main poultry species--breeder, layer, and broiler chickens, turkey and duck--is dealt with in separate chapters that each explain the principle of disease control. There are chapters on hatcheries, nutrition, and housing. Other topics include genetic resistance to disease, vertically transmitted diseases and strategies for disease control. The book provides an holistic view of the health of poultry and deserves consideration for use as a textbook for a general veterinary curriculum while reserving the more weighty tomes on avian medicine for specialty studies.

Richard B. Talbot, DVM, PhD