262 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Jan. 



have used whitewash, never have used kerosene ; but I 

 will tell you what I have done : the floor of my poultry 

 house is made of cement, and I put in about an inch of saw- 

 dust. Since that I have never added anything. Occasion- 

 ally I have taken out the poultry droppings. They are being 

 stirred up all the time, and the floor is always dry, never 

 moist. There is not a day in the year but what my hens 

 will dust. They have artificial heat near by, so that it is so 

 warm there that water never freezes in winter ; and every 

 sunny day through the winter they will dust there as freely 

 and nicely as they will in the summer or in autumn. That 

 dusting is amply sufficient to keep them free from lice. 

 The house is cleared out once in two, three or four years, and 

 nothing else done to it. Whenever the fertilizer accumu- 

 lates, or whenever I want to use it, I take off about an inch 

 of it. The remaining inch keeps my poultry entirely free 

 from vermin all the time. If anybody can do it any cheaper 

 than that, I should like to know it. 



Secretary Sessions. There is one question which it seems 

 to me ouijht to be considered here. You know that occa- 

 sionally eggs become very plenty in the country, and it is 

 difficult to sell them ; and you know that occasionally the 

 price of poultry gets very low, especially about Thanks- 

 giving time, and we get a very small price per pound. 

 Then, again, as I go around the country, I hear some men 

 say that the West is going to kill out our spring chicken 

 business, and that the time is near at hand when the price of 

 poultry and eggs is going to be so low that there will be no 

 profit in the business. I should like to have the views of the 

 essayist as to the probability of that prediction being ful- 

 filled. 



Dr. TwiTCHELL. That is a question of a great deal of 

 importance ; but before I touch upon that, there is one thing 

 I would like to say that was suggested by what Dr. Fisher 

 has said. In speaking of building a house and filling in 

 between the sills four inches of dry earth, I had in mind the 

 very thing which he secures by the use of sawdust ; that is, 

 providing a good dust l)ath and also a receptacle to hold the 

 droppings, where they can be dried and taken care of. 

 These droppings M'ill give }^ou a large amount of valuable 



