CHAPTER VIII. 



Sanitation and Hygiene 



PREVENTING DISEASES 



A vigorous flock of prolific fowls is an impossiblity 

 without sanitary surroundings and intelligent feed- 

 ing. Take the finest, hardiest pen of fowls you can 

 buy, house them in an unventilated coop, allow filth to 

 accumulate on the floors and mites to breed among 

 the filth, neglect to spade or to plant the runs, and 

 in a very short time your vigorous, red-combed 

 birds become roupy, worthless stuff. Up-to-date 

 poultrymen understand this so well that the modern 

 poultry plant is almost as clean as my lady's kitchen. 



Roup is the most common result of contaminated 

 air. Scaly leg arises directly from filthy runs and 

 yards. Chicken pox is passed on from generation to 

 generation in houses where disinfectants are never 

 used. Dirty drinking water is the source of 

 diarrhea and other intestinal troubles. Moldy 

 scratching litter causes a disease of the lungs and air 

 passages which is as hard to cure as roup. Foul 

 soil breeds the pestilent gape worm, and who can 

 catalogue the trouble and loss that follow when filthy 

 houses and coops once become infested with mites ? 



Cleanliness is the first essential in the care of 

 fowls, and in order to attain perfect sanitary condi- 

 tions there must be, as the Maine Station has tersely 

 put it : 



1. Clean Houses. 



2. Clean Air. 



3. Clean Food. 



