Hen Health. 47 



refer to the various preparations and mixtures sold as poultry- 

 powders and egg-producing food. One of the most highly 

 recommended of these was once analyzed and found to consist 

 of wholly useless and very cheap materials, with a little Cay- 

 enne pepper to give it flavor. All these are useless, and I be- 

 lieve do harm ; just as the quack medicines for infants and 

 older people are to be avoided, these should be, with the costly 

 crushed shells which are, at the best, indigestible, and which 

 are not nearly so good as fresh bones broken up with a ham- 

 mer on a block in the yard, and which furnish all the lime re- 

 quired, in a digestible form. 



THE THREE WORST DISEASES. 

 DR. F. L. KILBOURNE. 



Fowl Cholera. This is a highly contagious, bacterian dis- 

 ease, very fatal to all fowls and birds, and due to the presence 

 in the system of a living microscopic organism or bacillus. The 

 disease can not be produced, as is very commonly supposed and 

 so stated by some writers, by filth, want of care, or any other 

 unhealthy condition, except this germ of the disease is present. 

 Then it is that the above unhealthy conditions greatly favor its 

 spreading, and increase its mortality. The germs are generally 

 taken in with the food or drinking-water, and then find their 

 way to all parts of the system ; while the disease is readily 

 spread by contact with diseased animals or any of their prod- 

 ucts. The symptoms, like those of most other diseases of 

 poultry, are not altogether satisfactory. There are usually 

 dullness, ruffled feathers, drooping of head and wings, un- 

 steady gait, a greenish yellow diarrhosa, sometimes frothy, and 

 later frequently bloody. The comb and wattles become very 

 dark-colored or black. The fowls seek the sunshine or crowd 

 listlessly together to keep warm. Any or nearly all of the 

 above symptoms are absent in some cases. But whenever the 

 fowls are dying rapidly without apparent cause, and fowl 

 cholera is in the neighborhood, it may be suspected, and pre- 



