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the poultry house, there to be mixed with the sand or earth of the 

 floor, or with this and the broken leaves, straw or other material 

 used for litter, or is deposited on the ground on which the fowls 

 run outside. None of this manure is salable, but every bit of it 

 can be utilized. Moreover, if it is not utilized, it will sooner or 

 later poison the land wherever, deposits of it are very abundant, 

 making it unfit for poultry and often causing disease and loss to 

 such an extent that the poultry ceases to be profitable. Whether 

 a poultry keeper makes use of the manure or not, he must take 

 care that it shall not remain in such places or in such condition 

 that it is a danger and a menace to the health of the fowls. The 

 rough of the droppings on the floor of the poultry house must be 

 removed at frequent intervals, and once a year, at least, the earth 

 floor must be removed to a depth of four or five inches, and re- 

 newed. Labor is required to thus renew the floors of the houses 

 yearly ; and if the soil taken out is not utilized, or is used simply 

 as so much rubbish to fill a hole or ditch, the cost of this labor 

 must be paid for directly out of the cash receipts. If this soil, 

 saturated and thoroughly mixed as it is with hen manure, can be 

 applied as a top-dressing to grass land, its value for this purpose 

 will more than compensate, in the increase of the next year's hay 

 crop, for all the labor of renovating the floors. Of course this 

 soil is useful for many other crops, but I have mentioned this one 

 as that to which it is most generally applied. I have seen on 

 farms in this State pieces of mowing land heavily dressed year 

 after year with hen manure and soil from the poultry houses and 

 yards, when the annual cut was sometimes as high as four and 

 five tons per acre. 



The droppings deposited outdoors are to be considered next. 

 When hens are kept in small yards, these have to be treated much 

 as the floors of the houses are. Even with much larger yards, 

 something must be done to purify the soil. If the yard, though 

 not very small, is not large enough to be kept permanently in 

 grass, frequent spadings are necessary to keep it in habitable con- 

 dition ; and these mere spadings or stirrings of the soil, while they 

 improve it, do not put it in perfect condition. Nothing will do 

 that like growing a crop on it. If the yard is large enough to be 

 kept in permanent sod, but still so small or so heavily stocked 

 that every part of it is trampled over by the fowls many times a 

 day, the condition is not much better ; the sod, undisturbed from 

 year to year, becomes poisoned as the bare earth would, and the 

 common result is a slow poisoning and slow but sure deterioration 

 of the poultry stock, even when conditions are not bad enough to 

 produce malignant disease. 



