152 LESSONS IN POULTRY KEEPING SECOND SERIES. 



recovery will be immediate. Keep the fowl quiet atul comfortable for a day or two before 

 returning to the pen. Meantime try to determine whether there was any special reason in 

 the conditions in that pen for a fowl to take cold that way, and if found, correct the trouble. 

 Fowls with diarrhea may be given a purgative if treatment is undertaken while the fowls, 

 though somewhat distressed, are quite active, and eat and move about quite freely. But if 

 the diarrhea has evidently greatly weakened the fowl it is better to check it promptly and to 

 give a stimulant as well. For any of these purposes treat a fowl as you would a child of the 

 age specified above, and you cannot go far wrong. 



For a fowl that is crop bound, or that has the crop filled with gas and fluid as a result 

 of disorders of the stomach, the first thing to do is to relieve the condition of the crop. It is 

 in connection with such simple operations as these that the personality and deftness of the 

 operator become factors. Some people are so rough in handling the patient, or bungle the 

 operation so that the general condition of the fowl after relief Is worse than before. Others 

 will, \vithoutspecialinstructionor experience, quickly and neatly do what is *o be done. If 

 one finds he is bungling such an operation badly he had better let it alone, and kill the fowl 

 if the case seems too serious to be likely to recover without treatment. 



Of what may be called minor ailments of poultry, I have found nothing so hard to deal 

 with as the sweating and exhaustion that come from overcrowding young chickens in brood- 

 rs or roosting coops. In these cases we have a combination of severe conditions continued 

 for hours after the chicken has begun to be seriously affected by them. Either the crowding, 

 or the overheating, or the partial smothering alone, if continued through the greater part of 

 a night, would have very bad results. When the three are combined, and some chicks killed 

 <during the process, it is not strange that many of the survivors are so weak and exhausted 

 that the system is very slow to begin to recuperate. How far very careful feeding, nursing, 

 ?md care to see that each chicken was comfortable at night, would be successful in such cases, 

 I do not know. With such attention as it is profitable to give ordinary chickens, those that 

 Jiave gone through an experience of this kind show the effects of it for months, or even all 

 through their lives. This may not be observed if there is not another flock at hand with which 

 to compare them, but when a poultryman's own stock furnishes opportunities for such com- 

 parisons he can hardly fail to notice it. My experience has been that, though some of them 

 may turn out all right, on the whole it is more profitable to kill every chick in a lot that has 

 Miffered conspicuously from such conditions than to keep them for the sake of the few that 

 anay turn out well. 



In cases of indisposition which might be due to food taken or som3 irritant substance taken 

 with food, the best thing to do is to confine the fowls for a time where it is certain that they 

 <can get nothing but what the keeper gives them, and then feed only foods known to be pure 

 *md of good quality until the cause of the trouble has been discovered. Thus if a mixture of 

 ground feed stuffs has been used, that is, an article sold in mixture, and there is any sus- 

 picion that something in it might be responsible for some trouble that has developed, discon- 

 tinue its use, and feed only whole or cracked grains, or mashes made on the premises of known 

 ingredients of good quality. In most cases of this kind careful feeding alone will soon bring 

 the fowls back to health. I doubt whether it ever pays to do anything more than this for them. 

 "In all such cases one should do all that can be done to learn the cause of the trouble. If it is in 

 the mixture of food used, discontinue that article, but be reasonably sure first that it is in that 

 "food. The trouble may be due to irregularity in feeding, and all that is necessary to do for it 

 is to l>e regular in feeding and let nature work the cure. No change of food may be necessary 

 ju>t regulation. 



For mild attacks of indigestion accurring when there is no reason to suppose the trouble is 

 <lue to the quality of food, there is nothing better nothing so good, in fact, as fasting, letting 

 tihe fowls go without food, except green food, for one or two days then feeding sparingly. In 

 '.highly fed hens the digestive system is often overworked. A system of feeding and quantity of 

 :food that one hen or one flock stands all right may be too much for another. The poultry 

 ikeeper has to judge of what and how to feed, not by someone else's results, but by results in 

 .bis own yards. To get good growth and heavy egg production we must feed heavily, and in 

 deeding heavily we are always running risks of breaking down the digestive system by over- 



