POULTRY-CRAFT. 127 



170. Cleanliness. Everything about a poultry plant should be kept 

 reasonably clean so clean that there are no offensive sights or odors. As a 

 rule the droppings should be removed daily. Where the quantity of drop- 

 pings to be removed *ach day is small the common practice is to clean twice 

 a week, or once a week, or once a month. This is not a good plan. It does 

 no harm to let the droppings boards go uncleaned for a few days, occasionally, 

 (at least it does no noticeable measurable harm) but it is not good for fowls 

 to sleep nearly always with their heads only a few inches above an accumula- 

 tion of their own excreta and the lapse from daily cleaning ought not to be 

 permitted to occur often. It should be the inviolable rule to take up the drop- 

 pings daily, in winter, when the hens are on the roosts for fourteen or fifteen 

 hours of the twenty-four ; in damp weather, and whenever some of the drop- 

 pings have the peculiarly offensive odor that gives warning of something 

 going wrong in the digestive system. After being cleaned, the droppings 

 boards should be sprinkled with land plaster, road dust, sifted coal ashes, or 

 air-slaked lime to absorb the liquid manure. * 



THE FLOOR of the roosting room, if not littered, should be raked or swept 

 clean once a week or once a fortnight the period between cleanings being 

 regulated by the space per fowl and by the proportion of time the fowls spend 

 in the roosting room. Small bare yards should be cared for in the same way. f 



NESTS in which straw is used should be cleaned out, and new straw put in 

 about once a month oftener if the straw becomes damp or is fouled. In dry 

 and sandy situations, bottomless nest boxes may be used on an earth floor 

 without nesting material. These nests need no further care than they get 

 when, in cleaning up the floor, they are set to one side, the floor beneath 

 them raked smooth, the nest box replaced. The hens hollow the earth in the 

 nest to suit themselves. 



greater floor space the litter is not so soon broken ; with less floor space it would be very 

 difficult to keep a floor in good condition without doing too much work. 



* NOTE. If the droppings are saved to sell to tanneries, absorbents cannot be used on 

 the boards. Near large tanneries there are generally men who make a business of col- 

 lecting poultry manure. The price varies with the demand and supply, the average 

 being about seventy-five cents per barrel. It is an open question with some poultrymen, 

 who could use the manure on land, whether, all things considered, it does not pay better 

 to use the manure than to sell it. When the hen manure is to be sold for tanning, the 

 droppings boards cannot be kept in as nice condition ; are more difficult to clean, and 

 may be a menace to the health of the fowls. The droppings board saturated with urine 

 is unsanitary, and though it may be used without bad consequences for a long time, it is 

 unsafe, for unsanitary methods have a way of going back on a poultryman just as he 

 begins to be sure that the opposition to them is all nonense. 



tNoTE. These advices as to the frequency of the periodical cleanings are of course 

 suggestive ; still they indicate very nearly the limits of time between cleanings when the 

 fowls' quarters are kept reasonably clean. A poultryman who works systematically, soon 

 arranges a rotation of work which brings the regular cleanings near enough together to 

 keep things looking respectable. 



