4 METHODS OF POULTRY MAXAGEMEXT. 



forced to do so to live under unhygienic conditions. But every 

 civilized country in the world believes that the most economical 

 insurance against the steady loss of national wealth which the 

 prevalence of disease involves is the enforcement of sanitary 

 regulations throughout its domain. In poultry keeping many 

 may be successful for a time in managing their birds in defi- 

 ance of the laws of sanitation and hygiene; a very fezv may 

 be successful in this practice for a long time, but in the long 

 run the vast majority will find that thorough, careful, and intel- 

 ligent attention to these laws will be one of the best guarantees 

 of permanent success that they can find. 



Poultry hA'giene and sanitation will be considered here under 

 seven main heads, as follows: i. Housing. 2. Feeding. 

 3. The Land. 4. Exercise. 5. External Parasites. 6. 

 Disposal of the Dead. 7. Isolation of Sickness. What is said 

 under all of these heads is intended to apply (unless a specific 

 statement to the contrary is made) both to adult birds and to 

 chicks. No discussion of the hygiene of incubation, or of the 

 relative merits of artificially and naturally hatched chickens will 

 be undertaken here, because there are special subjects falling 

 outside the field of general poultry hygiene. 



I. POULTRY HOUSE HY^GIEX'E AND SAXITATIOX^ 



A. Cleanliness. — The thing of paramount importance in the 

 hygienic housing of poultry is cleanliness. By this is meant not 

 merely plain, ordinary cleaning up, in the housewife sense, -but 

 also bacteriological cleaning up ; that is, disinfection. All build- 

 ings or structures of whatever kind in which poultry are housed 

 during any part of their lives should be subjected to a most 

 thorough and searching cleaning and disinfection once every 

 year. This cleaning up should naturally come for each dif- 

 ferent structure (i. e., laying, colony or brooder house, indi- 

 vidual brooder, incubator, etc.) at a time which just precedes 

 the putting of new stock into this structure. 



A very thorough method of cleaning a poultry house: Not 

 every poultryman knows how to clean a poultry house thor- 

 oughly. The first thing to do is to remove all the litter and 

 loose dirt which can be shovelled out. Then give the house — 

 floor, walls and ceiling— a thorough sweeping and shovel out 



