118 The Truth About the Poultry Business 



Depend on yourself. You have taken others' advice long 

 enough. Think for yourself, make your own investigations, 

 and you will have a better chance for success. 



A poultry house, not being shaped like a bottle but more 

 like it after you have broken off the neck, is just as subject 

 to draughts during a wind as is the broken bottle when you 

 blow into it. 



When I first had hens with roup I did not know anything 

 about it. I had several hundred fine pullets suffering from it. 

 I had a large, round brooder house, made out of boards and 

 battens for the sides and shakes for the roof. It was draughty 

 when the wind was blowing. I did not know what to do 

 for the pullets, but I read in a poultry paper that Mary 

 Smith said, "When my chicks get roup I take the oil can 

 from my sewing machine, fill it with coal oil, insert the 

 spout up the nose of the chicken and give it a copious dose. 

 If the chick's head is swelled, I dip the head in coal oil and 

 in a short time my chicks get well." This is the kind of 

 advice I have read in poultry papers, and this is the kind 

 of information you are paying your money for — information 

 which is not only valueless to you, but positively harmful 

 in that, through your not knowing what to do, you try such 

 inhumane treatment on a dumb fowl. Such advice gets you 

 off on the wrong track. It keeps you from ever learning the 

 truth and getting on the right road. 



A short time ago some one, writing for a poultry paper and 

 telling how to cure roup by using medicine, got the manage- 

 ment of a large poultry farm and very soon had hundreds 

 of cases of roup. 



Any one who would take a chick suffering from roup and 

 give it the coal-oil treatment should be compelled to take 

 the first dose himself. How would you like some one to 

 take and duck your head in a can of coal oil when you were 



