30 DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE GEORGIA. 



sprinkled over this shelf to catch the droppings, and to facilitate 

 their collection, at intervals of two or three days. 



The nests may be placed against the wall of the house, under this 

 shelf, and thus be entirely protected from the droppings, and suf- 

 ficiently secluded to suit the Jiens. The droppings can be very 

 easily swept from this shelf, into a vessel placed under it, without 

 defiling the floor. The dro-ppings should be removed two or three 

 times a week and stored under shelter away from the fowl house. 

 The floor of the house, if of dirt, should be filled two or three inches 

 deep with dry sand, or clay, which should be dug up and removed 

 once a year and replaced with fresh soil. Whether of dirt, cement 

 or plank it should be occasionally sprinkled with diluted sulphuric 

 acid to destroy all germs of 'disease which may have found a lodgment 

 there. The sulphuric acid should be carefully handled to prevent 

 injury to the clothing or persons of those applying it. The house 

 should be thoroughly whitewashed twice a year to purify it, and to 

 destroy insects injurious to the poultry. Crude petroleum, or, if 

 this cannot be had, kerosene oil, sprinkled over the roosts and sides 

 of the house, will be found beneficial in destroying the insects. 



Thorough fumigation with tobacco smoke while the fowls are 

 confined in the house will prove efficacious. In order to secure the 

 full benefit of this, however, the house must be made close enough 

 to retain the smoke. 



Fowls are, however, far more healthy in our climate if required 

 to roost in trees during the summer. Indeed, they will be more 

 healthy if required to roost on trees throughout the year ; but will 

 not produce so many eggs in winter as they will if kept during the 

 cold months in comfortable houses. 



Nests, on which hens are expected to sit, should be made upon 

 the ground rather than upon plamk. If made upon the latter it 

 will be well to place upon the bottom of the nests a fresh sod be- 

 fore setting the hens. Hollow out the sod in the- form in which 

 the hen prepares it when left to her own instincts and make a nest 

 of green cotton seed, preserving the same form. The green cotton 

 seed are in some way offensive to mites and other insects injurious 

 to fowls. Some years since an experiment was made with green 

 cotton seed in nests by the side of others in which grass was 

 used. While eggs in the latter were infested with mites daily for 



