CHAPTER XIII 

 Enemies and Diseases 



Probably the best and most effective remedy for 

 all serious poultry ailments, in young or old, is the 

 application of a good sharp ax where it will sever the 

 head from the body. This remedy is scouted by some, 

 but it still remains the best time and money saver, and 

 the surest means to promote health in our poultry. 

 Many poultry ailments serve as a warning from nature 

 that the affected birds are unfit for breeders through 

 some constitutional taint. If we doctor these individ- 

 uals which nature has marked as unfit, and succeed in 

 pulling them through, we defeat our own best interests. 

 Unless we weed out the ailing and weaklings, and 

 refuse to breed from such, we must expect a large 

 mortality in the offspring. 



A correspondent writes us that after five years of 

 using no remedy for sick fowls except "a good sharp 

 ax," he now finds disease in his flock of very rare 

 occurrence, and usually of trifling character, which 

 recovers spontaneously. Previous to using the ax 

 freely he had much trouble with sick hens, and never 

 got through a winter without roup. Another cor- 

 respondent, who always uses the medicine bottle, and 

 cannot bring himself to killing off the diseased breed- 

 ers, is complaining of great mortality among his chicks 

 from "no apparent cause." His chicks die at all stages 

 of incubation, and some are dropping off all the time 

 from hatching up to maturity — a sure sign of 

 unhealthy parentage, and evidence of the working of 

 nature's law, that of "the survival of the fittest." Had 



