28 MY POULTRY DAY BY DAY 
There are, of course, some people who try to run fowls on 
impossible lines. They systematically neglect them, underfeed 
them, and keep them in a most insanitary state. Of such people 
I can only say that they ought to be dealt with by the authorities. 
How Nor to Do It 
I have before me letters from two correspondents which exactly 
answer each other. The first, which is in the nature of a warning 
to those keeping fowls in back-yards, reads : 
‘*In discussing ‘back-yard’ poultry-keeping, two points always 
seem to me to be overlooked—viz. the insanitary conditions 
frequently brought about in the immediate vicinity of dwellings, 
and the incessant suffering inflicted on helpless birds by the 
ignorant amateur thus induced to keep poultry. Such a person 
seldom seems to realise the amount of attention that even half-a- 
dozen confined birds require. He is terribly apt to leave the 
wretched creatures permanently penned up in a small house with 
the tiniest of runs attached, the cleaning out of which is lamentably 
casual and spasmodic, while the importance of regular and 
systematic feeding hardly ever seems to occur to him. 
“TI have been a reluctant witness of the miserable spectacle 
of some half-a-dozen White Wyandottes so treated, and it is no 
exaggeration to say that these birds are in a disgusting, indeed a 
loathsome, condition. The little dark house and wire run, a few 
feet square, in which they are imprisoned has in the course of 
months piled up with filth and coal ashes, and is always innocent 
of any kind of litter. They are not infrequently left from early 
in the afternoon till late in the following forenoon without a scrap 
of food, and, of course, cannot forage for it. 
“Their water-bowl for days together is dirty and empty. 
When they do get food, it consists, winter and summer alike, of 
a microscopic amount of maize and any scanty table scraps 
available. The owners have not the remotest idea of cruelty, 
and are ordinary worthy folk in other respects. They act thus 
