290 POULTRY BREEDING 
have a dry, windproof house to go into when they begin 
to feel cold. They will dabble around in mud and slush 
all day and escape trouble if they have a house which is 
free from dampness to retire to at night.” 
SALT.—Salt is as necessary to fowls as it is to human 
beings. It aids digestion and makes the blood richer. 
Two ounces a day to 100 hens is enough. Fowls some- 
times eat salt and die because they have been deprived 
of it and eat too much when they get a chance to help 
themselves. 
SCALY LEG.—This is the work of a very minute in- 
sect which burrows under the scale on the legs of fowls 
and lives there. Its excretions are of a lime-like consis- 
tency and if the insects are allowed to remain at work 
these excretions form unsightly masses and destroy the 
scales as well as the symmetry of the shanks. This 
trouble is very easily combated. Simply grease the 
shanks of the fowls with lard, rubbing it in so as to get 
it lodged under the scale. This kills the insect, softens 
the lime-like growths and stops further progress, but the 
shanks never recover their natural condition. If the legs 
of fowls are greased lightly occasionally this disease will 
not attack them. It rarely makes its appearance where 
poultry houses are kept clean and properly whitewashed. 
Asiatic fowls are more liable to scaly leg than the breeds 
with clean legs. 
SEPARATING THE SEXES.—It is best to keep the 
sexes apart except during the hatching season. This 
gives the poultryman infertile eggs, which will keep fresh 
and sweet in hot weather for weeks, while a fertilized egg 
will spoil in a few days, when the temperature is high. 
It also has been shown by careful experiments that un- 
mated hens will produce more eggs than hens which have 
