Poultry Hygiene 31 



Furthermore, burying cannot be resorted to at all during the 

 winter months when the ground is frozen. 



The only really sanitary method of dealing with dead 

 bodies is to incinerate them. The difficulty of following 

 this plan in practice is that the farmer or poultryman usually 

 does not have any suitable source of heat ready at hand at 

 all times. To be sure, during certain seasons of the year, 

 those poultrymen who employ large brooder houses with a 

 hot water heating system have a furnace in operation, and 

 the dead chicks can be burned up in the furnace. This, 

 however, covers only a part of the year. At other times 

 resort must be had to burying or some other means of dis- 

 posal, as the poultryman is not likely to fire up a large fur- 

 nace for the sake of burning a few dead birds. 



To meet this requirement there has recently been devised 

 at the Maine Agricultural Experiment Station the small 

 crematory here described. The construction was carried 

 out with the idea of keeping the first cost as low as possible, 

 in order that there should be nothing about it which any 

 poultryman or farmer could not easily afford to duplicate. 

 As a matter of fact, the cost of materials for the crematory 

 was less than ten dollars. The labor was done by the 

 poultryman and his assistant at odd times, when an hour 

 or two could be spared for this work. The result is, there- 

 fore, not beyond the reach of any poultryman or farmer. 

 At the same time the crematory is so satisfactory in opera- 

 tion that any one who builds one will wonder, after he has 

 completed and used it for a time, why he did not long before 

 have so simple and sanitary an adjunct to his plant. 



The crematory shown in Fig. 5 is very simple in con- 

 struction. It consists essentially of a cement base or fire 

 box, bearing on its top a series of grate bars which are in 

 turn covered by a cremating box or oven in which the ma- 

 terial to be incinerated is placed. 



