CHAPTER XVII. 
DISEASES OF POULTRY. 
Poultry generally suffer from preventible ills. It is 
almost useless, and rarely ever worth while, to treat sick 
poultry. A chicken is hardly worth the trouble re- 
quired to physic it, and nine out of ten die in spite of all 
the treatment that can be given them. Poultry are 
naturally subject to very few diseases. If kept clean, 
not overfed, not cooped up close, kept from foul, pu- 
trid food, supplied with clean water regularly, and have 
abundant pure air in their roosting-places, they live and 
thrive without any trouble, except in rare cases. The 
fatal disorders which result from ill-treatment cannot 
be cured by medicine. It is too late. The mischief has 
been done when the first symptoms appear, and the best 
procedure is generally to kill the diseased fowls and say 
the rest by sanitary measures. 
—_—o— 
DISTEMPER, ROUP, AND CHICKEN-POX. 
An article which recently appeared in a poultry jour- 
nal is the most practical we have ever seen on these 
subjects, and is well worth reprinting. Fowls never per- 
spire; the waste of the system is in a large measure car- 
ried off in the vapor of the breath, which is far more 
rapid than is by many supposed. The heart of the 
fowl beats 150 times per minute, which causes a rapid 
respiration, and demands twice the amount of air in pro- 
portion to weight. Even the bones of the wing are 
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