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dows, for windows let the heat out as they let it in, and the 

 difference in temperature between noon and night is too great. 



KEEP THE HOUSE CLEAN. 



Cleanliness is the most important element in sanitation. 

 Disease germs find in filth a congenial soil. The hen house 

 cannot be kept too clean ! The room in which hens are con- 

 fined plays many parts it is their sleeping room, dining room, 

 workshop, their bath room and water closet. Suppose a large 

 family to be shut up in one room and obliged to use it for 

 every purpose. Do you not see how careful they would have 

 to be to escape disease? It is a wonder to me how hens man- 

 age to live through the winter in the majority of houses, to say 

 nothing of laying eggs. 



The hen house should have its daily, weekly, monthly and 

 yearly cleaning. The windows should be opened in the mid- 

 dle of the day for two or three hours on every day in winter 

 when the sun is shining. The droppings under the roots 

 should be removed every morning! When poultrymen re- 

 alize that poultry manure is a virulent poison and should not 

 be allowed to pollute the houses or the yards where the hens 

 are kept, they will make a great step toward success. It takes 

 but a few minutes to a house to remove the droppings, and the 

 gain in looks and in wholesomeness is worth the cost. After 

 the droppings are removed the dropping board should be 

 sprinkled lightly with earth, coal ashes or land plaster. 



Once a week, summer or winter, the drinking vessels 

 should be scalded out, and once a week in winter the litter 

 should be shaken up, and if you have a board floor, the dust 

 and dirt that settles to the bottom should be removed. If the 

 floor is of earth the surface droppings should be taken out and 

 the earth raked up. 



Once a month the cleaning should be more thorough. The 

 litter should be renewed, and the floor swept. The roosts 

 should be kerosened and in summer the walls around the roosts 

 sprayed with kerosene or with a kerosene emulsion. Nest 

 boxes should be emptied, painted with a good lice killer, and 

 .when dried out filled about one-third full of dry planer shav- 

 ings. The dust box should receive attention. 



The annual cleaning is still more radical. On some sunny 

 day in autumn the earlier the better shut the hens out in 

 their yards and begin work upon their quarters. Everything 

 movable in the house should be taken outside. Sweep the dust 



