METHODS OF POULTRY MANAGEMENT AT THE 

 MAINE AGRICULTURAL EXPERIMENT STATION. 



INTRODUCTION. 



Many years' practical experience in raising and keeping poul- 

 try and investigations in poultry breeding at the Maine Experi- 

 ment Station have resulted in the accumulation of a considerable 

 fund of information on poultry management. It is the purpose 

 of the following pages to outline this experience for the benefit 

 of poultry keepers and thereby to help them to discriminate 

 between some of the wrong theories which have underlain much 

 of the common practice of the past and the better theories which 

 underlie other and newer methods that are now yielding more 

 satisfactory results. It may be that these methods are no better 

 than those practiced by others, but the attempt is made to state 

 concisely the methods which have been or are now being suc- 

 cessfully employed at the Station. 



POULTRY HYGIENK AND SANITATION. 



Second in importance only to high constitutional vigor and 

 health in the stock is attention to the basic rules of hygiene and 

 sanitation in the management of poultry. This section gives an 

 account of the general principles involved in the methods of 

 dealing with these matters practised at the Maine Agricultural 

 Experiment Station. Attention to the rules and principles here 

 set forth will go a great ways towards preventing the occur- 

 rence of disease. This does not mean that if these rules are 

 not followed disease and destruction will forthwith result. 

 Everyone knows of plenty of instances of more or less suc- 

 cessful poultry keeping under the most unsanitary and unhy- 

 gienic of conditions. So similarly human beings are able when 



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