210 



Clean Land. If you run poultry continually year after year on 

 the same piece of land, you may expect the time to come when it 

 will be utterly impossible to raise poultry there unless the ground 

 is cultivated and cropped. We like to stir the soil and to keep some 

 grain or crop of some nature growing there. This is most profitable 

 for you, beneficial to the soil, and insures the health of your flock. 



Lice and Mites. These should not be tolerated. They will sap 

 the vitality from your fowls and will give disease an opportunity to 

 get a start. You will learn elsewhere in this book how to avoid these 

 parasites. 



Little Things. It it close attention to details and little things 

 which count for success with poultry. Don't unthoughtedly leave a 

 sick bird with the rest of the flock to spread the disease. Isolate all 

 sick fowls. We prefer killing a bird before it reaches such a con- 

 dition that death results, but if it should die, be sure to burn the 

 carcass. The next best thing is to bury the body if you cannot 

 burn it. 



THE ESSENTIALS TOWARD PREVENTION. 



Dr. G. B. Morse of the United States Department of Agriculture,, 

 sums up the essentials of poultry hygiene as follows: 

 1. Clean up. 

 2. Clean out. 

 3. Clean houses. 

 4. Clean air. 

 5. Clean food. 

 6. Clean water. 



7. Clean yards and clean range. 

 8. Clean incubators and brooders. 

 9. Clean birds outside and inside. 



A GREAT PREVENTATIVE. 



You can keep your birds in a much healthier state and prevent 

 many diseases if you keep their systems cleaned out by giving one- 

 third to one-half teaspoonful of Epsom salts to each bird every two 

 weeks. We dissolve the salts in water and moisten a mash made of 

 bran, middlings, corn meal, and beef scraps with the water contain- 

 ing the salts. During the breeding season, we give the salts once a 

 week. It will add much to the general health of your flock, and we 

 advise all farmers and poultrymen not to neglect this important pre- 

 ventative. 



TRAIN YOUR EYE TO DETECT DISEASES. 



One of the greatest troubles we have had with men at the Experi- 

 ment Station, even men who claim to be expert poultrymen and who 

 are apparently very careful and very much interested in their work 

 is that they are unable to detect diseases in its first symptoms and 

 when it is most easily overcome and remedied. We find that a very 

 large per cent of poultry raisers are not able to detect disease in its 

 first form and they do not know or fail to realize when the birds first 

 show symptoms of being out of condition. Anyone can readily tell 



