308 AGRICULTURE 



Grit. Fowls prepare their food, not by chewing it like 

 larger animals, but by grinding it against grit in the giz- 

 zard. Hence, fowls must have an abundance of grit, which 

 may be sand, gravel, cinders, pounded glass or oyster 

 shells, or any finely divided hard substance. If they range, 

 fowls can pick up enough of this. If confined, they should 

 be supplied with some form of grit, as clean sand or crushed 

 oyster shells. The oyster shells are especially useful to 

 laying hens because, besides serving in the gizzard to grind 

 the food, they furnish lime. Much lime is needed to form 

 the shell of the egg. 



Destroying vermin. The profits from poultry are much 

 reduced by the discomfort caused by lice and mites. When 

 fowls can scratch and roll in the dust, the dust often suffo- 

 cates the lice. A box of fine dry road-dust, or sifted ashes, 

 should be kept in the poultry-house so that the fowls can 

 regularly take their dust baths and thus destroy many 

 vermin. Chicken mites are not all thus killed. Many 

 leave the fowls after tormenting them all night, and spend 

 the daytime on the roosts and walls of the poultry-house. 

 Hence, the house ought to be whitewashed frequently with 

 a lime wash to which crude carbolic acid has been added. 

 The orchard spray pump may be used and the walls 

 and roosts sprayed either with this kind of whitewash 

 or with kerosene emulsion. Directions for making this 

 mixture, so useful for killing insects, are given in the 

 Appendix. 



By having the nests movable, these can be brought out 

 of the hen-house at frequent intervals and the straw burned, 

 thus ridding them of vermin. Some poultrymen dip their 



