MANUAL ON POULTRY. 37 



Another fruitful source of disease is found in stagnant or pol- 

 luted water with which the poor birds are compelled to slake their 

 thirst. 



As usually watered in flat, open troughs, the fowls are frequently 

 required to drink a solution of their own droppings. With such 

 treatment health cannot be expected. 



Irregularity in feeding is another fruitful source of disease. 

 During the winter months when insects are scarce and the birds 

 consequently find but little meat on their run, they are freely fed 

 with bred or grain. When spring arrives and insects become 

 abundant they get little except meat, and the feeding is too often 

 discontinued under the impression that they procure abundant sup- 

 plies on the run and do not need feeding. 



They thus have a bred diet in winter and one principally of meat 

 (insects) in summer, and the natural result of such management is 

 indigestion, disease and death. Fowls, no matter how good their 

 range, should be fed twice a day morning and evening the quan- 

 tity of food given depending upon the character of that accessible 

 to them during the day. 



In winter meat of some kind should be mingled with their bread, 

 and in summer they should have bread to mix with their daily 

 catch of meat (insects). 



A free use of flour of sulphur in their nests, and dust baths, and 

 an occasional dose in the food of small chicks and stock birds will 

 prove beneficial. The houses should be whitewashed inside and 

 out with a mixture of lime, salt and carbolic acid, and the floor occa- 

 sionally sprinkled with sulphuric acid, to destroy all germs of dis- 

 ease tnat may have found a lodgment there. 



DISTEMPER. 



Mr. I. K. Felch, in his " Breeding and Management of Poultry," 

 says : " This disease all chickens are heir to, and generally is taken 

 about the time they are twenty-two to twenty-six weeks old, and at 

 the time they are shedding their second chicken feathers. * * * 



" If carefully watched, little or no medicine is needed, and so light 

 is the disease that it hardly deserves a place in this catalogue. Yet 

 if not jealously watched it becomes the most frightful in the intro- 

 duction of ronp and consumption. 



