Poultry Hygiene 27 



has enough land and practices a definite and systematic crop 

 rotation in which poultry form one element. On the open 

 range where chicks are raised a four year rotation is operated 

 at the Maine Agricultural Experiment Station and serves 

 its purpose well. This system of cropping for the shorter 

 period is as follows : First year, chickens ; second year, a 

 hoed crop, such as beets, cabbage, mangolds or corn; third 

 year, seed down to timothy and clover, using oats or barley 

 as a nurse crop; fourth year, chickens again. When the 

 land can be spared it is left in grass the fourth year, and the 

 chickens are not put on it until the fifth year. The reason 

 for the particular crops mentioned above being used is 

 that they are all things which can be very advantageously 

 used in furnishing green food for the poultry at different 

 seasons of the year. 



To maintain the runs connected with a permanent poultry 

 house, where adult birds are kept, in a sweet and clean condi- 

 tion is a more difficult problem. About the best that one 

 can do here is to arrange alternate sets of runs so that one 

 set may be used one year and the other set the next, purify- 

 ing the soil so far as may be by plowing and harrowing 

 thoroughly annually, and planting exhaustive crops. Fail- 

 ing the possibility of alternating in this way, disinfection 

 and frequent plowing are the only resources left. 



The following excellent advice on this subject is given by 

 the English poultry expert Mr. E. T. Brown ^: "Tainted 

 ground is responsible for many of the diseases from which 

 fowls suffer, and yet it is a question that rarely receives the 

 attention it deserves. The chief danger of tainted soil 

 arises when fowls are kept in confinement, but still we often 

 find that even with those at liberty the land over which they 

 are running is far from pure. So long as the grass can be 

 kept growing strongly and vigorously there is small fear of 

 1 Farm Poultry, Vol. 18. 



