MAINE AGRICULTURAL EXPERIMENT STATION. 9 



(Vol. 15) brings home in a few words the importance of hav- 

 ing plenty of light in the poultry house. 



"Light in the poultry house has been found by the writer a 

 great help in keeping the house clean .and keeping the fowls 

 healthy. Probably there is no greater assistance to the diseases 

 of poultry than dark and damp houses, and dark houses are 

 frequently damp. In recent years I have had both kinds of 

 experience, those with the hens confined in a large, dry and light 

 house, and with hens confined in a dark house in which a sin- 

 gle window looking towards the setting sun furnished the only 

 light. Being forced to use the latter building for an entire 

 winter I found it impossible to get it thoroughly dried out after 

 a rain had rendered the walls damp. By spring some of the 

 fowls that had been confined there began to die of a mysteri- 

 ous disease and a post-mortem examination showed it to be 

 liver disease. Later the roup broke out in the same house and 

 this dread disease continued with the flock for months exacting 

 a heavy toll in laying hens." 



C. Avoid Dampness. Of all unfavorable environmental 

 conditions into which poultry may, by bad management, be 

 brought, a damp house is probably the worst. Nothing will 

 diminish the productivity of a flock so quickly and surely as 

 will dampness in the house, and nothing is so certain and speedy 

 an excitant to roup and kindred ills. The place where poultry 

 are housed must be kept dry if the flock is to be productive 

 and free from disease. 



D. Provide Clean and Dry Litter. Experience has demon- 

 strated that the best way in which to give fowls exercise during 

 the winter months in which, in northern climates at least, they 

 must be housed the greater part if not all of the time, is by 

 providing a deep litter in which the birds scratch for their dry 

 grain ration. For this litter the Experiment Station uses pine 

 planer shavings with a layer of oat straw on top. Whatever the 

 litter it should be changed as often as it gets damp or dirty. 



n. HYGIENIC FEEDING. 



Along with housing as a prime factor in poultry sanitation 

 goes feeding. This is not the place to enter upon a detailed 

 discussion of the compounding of rations and such topics. 



