POULTRY EXPERIMENTS. 185 



The University has 60 beautiful Horned Dorset sheep, and 

 for 3 years there has not been a tick or nit found on them. 

 They are perfectly clean and they have not been dipped for 3 

 years. Why can't lice be exterminated as completely on 

 the hens as in the case of the ticks on the sheep ? Last Decem- 

 ber the roosts and walls of the roosting closets in all of the 

 rooms, but one, were sprayed with 2 different brands of liquid 

 lice killers, which were warranted, by their makers, to destroy 

 all of the lice on fowl, by the fumes penetrating among the 

 feathers to the skins of the birds. The preparations were used 

 according to directions. The roosts and woodwork near them 

 were sprayed in the morning and left to dry, until the birds went 

 to roost. But the sprayed paint was not fully dry at that time, 

 although it was thinned by heating before applying it. The 

 curtains of the roosting closets were shut down at bed time as 

 usual and both ventilators, each of which are 3 feet long and 

 6 inches wide, were left wide open. Next morning it was very 

 evident, from the appearance of the birds, that they had not 

 enjoyed the night. They ate but little food during that, and 

 the succeeding 3 or 4 days and did not have their, usual appe- 

 tites for 9 or 10 days. The 700 birds were laying over 300 

 eggs per day before the trouble, but they laid less than 100 per 

 day during the following week, and did not lay as many as 

 before, until 24 days had elapsed. Many of them moulted par- 

 tially, or quite fully, and these did not lay much for 6 or 7 weeks. 

 It was not thought that any birds died from the accident. 

 Probably we were at fault in using the stuff in winter when 

 it did not thoroughly dry out, as it might have done in a long, 

 warm summer day. One pen at the end of the building was 

 not sprayed, but the air in that room was loaded with the odor 

 from the rest of the building, which easily found its way in, 

 around the loosely fitting door. The birds in that room fell off 

 in their egg yields for several days, but none of them moulted. 

 Many of the birds in the sprayed rooms refused to go to roost 

 in the closets again for several nights, until the odor had largely 

 disappeared, while those in the unsprayed room went into their 

 bedroom as usual. The reason for calling attention to this 

 experience is, that others may guard against using such prepa- 

 rations too freelv in cold weather. 



