CULTURE OF MADDER. 
357 
for a few days with soaked bran and lettuce, or 
cabbage chopped very fine. 
Flux is cured by pills of the yolk of an egg 
boiled hard, mixed with bruised hemp seed, or 
boiled barley diluted with wine. 
Costiveness, the reverse of the former, is cured 
by giving them beet root chopped fine or bran and 
water with a little honey mixed. 
Vermin may be destroyed by fumigating the 
roots with brimstone. 
Scab and itch are cured by feeding them with 
moist bran. 
Cramp is caused by cold and damp. When 
afflicted, the birds should not be allowed to roost 
out of doors, and the roost should be well secured 
and warm—rub the legs and feet with a little fresh 
butter. 
Abscess frequently comes upon the rump, and is 
caused by heat of blood, or torpid stomach, which 
corrupts the mass of blood. Open the abscess and 
press out the matter. Feed them with chopped 
beet root or lettuce, with some bran mixed, mois¬ 
tened with honey, or molasses and water. 
Fowls should not be allowed to roost in very 
large numbers together, but where great quanti¬ 
ties are raised, they should be kept in flocks of not 
more than one hundred. They should be kept 
very cleanly. 
Warmth, with freedom from damp, is the great 
secret in the care of fowls. Their food should be 
frequently changed, and green food often mixed 
with their meal, shorts, or bran. Indian meal and 
molasses and water will fatten poultry faster than 
any other food. Cinders should be sifted for them 
to roll in, which will free them from vermin, and 
they should never be without a supply of clean 
water for drinking. 
Never give them warm or hot food, which causes 
them to become crop bound. Hemp and buck¬ 
wheat, or wheat occasionally, are good stimulants. 
So far as food is concerned, every farmer’s wife 
throughout the country knows what is proper. 
One great danger arises from their voracity of ap¬ 
petite inducing them to eat too much of food too 
nutritious for their delicate digestive organs, 
whereby they become sickly, or what is commonly 
called crop bound. Simple as the remedy for this 
evil may appear, it is somewhat difficult to put in 
practice where large numbers are fed together. 
As regards attention to cleanliness, and their 
other common wants, such as regularity of feeding, 
and an abundant supply of pure water, nothing 
need be said ; they can scarcely live, certainly not 
flourish, without these necessary requirements 
being strictly attended to. 
Under, however, the best management, and the 
greatest precautions used against their various 
ailments, many will perish. It is a truth, how¬ 
ever, that almost all the diseases of poultry arise 
from atmospheric causes. 
With respect to medical treatment, applied to 
the diseases of poultry, but little regarding its 
efficacy is known. The nostrums and mode of 
treatment adopted throughout the country, together 
with the greater part of what has been written 
upon the subject, is a farrago of nonsense and 
absurdity. If shelter, warmth, food, and cleanli¬ 
ness, congenial to their habits, will not preserve 
them in health, but little reliance can be placed 
upon medicine. 
Great care is necessary to protect poultry from 
the ravages of the skunk, the muskrat, the fox, 
and other animals, who possess a taste so refined 
as to prefer chicken to coarser food. And to 
insure complete success on a large scale, suitable 
buildings should be provided. 
A close room, which should be made to exclude 
the wintry frosts, and also admit the balmy breeze 
of summer, should be provided for the machines, 
and should be kept as an eccaleobion hall. From 
this hall passages should lead to other rooms less 
tight and substantial, and many of them provided 
with roosts. As the birds grow they should by de¬ 
grees be moved along, until after six weeks, or 
thereabouts, they will have an open yard with 
roosting places under a shed. In this manner, by- 
keeping them in flocks of one or two hundred, and 
changing their roosting places frequently, by keep¬ 
ing them clean, &c., there will be no difficulty in 
raising any number per annum, provided no old 
fowls are kept on the premises. With suitable 
conveniencies there will be less trouble in raising 
one hundred thousand a year, than in raising one 
hundred without them. 
To a successful rearing, therefore, of a large 
number of birds by artificial means, the only 
required essentials are, a sufficient number of these 
machines; suitable buildings; warmth and pro¬ 
tection from dampness ; proper food : and a care¬ 
ful attention to cleanliness in all respects. An 
establishment so constructed and so conducted can 
not fail to pay an immense profit to its proprietor. 
The best food for chickens until three or four 
days old is eggs, either stale or fresh, boiled hard 
and cut into very small pieces. After which, meal 
wet up, and hommony dry. As they grow older, the 
feed should be varied, and they should have more 
or less green food, like lettuce, cabbage, endive, 
&c., chopped fine, and mixed with their meal ; 
and loppered milk and bonny-clabber is most ex¬ 
cellent. Cold boiled potatoes, fresh meat, crusts 
of bread soaked, and many other things usually 
thrown to the pigs, are excellent and profitable 
food for all kinds of gallinaceous fowl.— Mickle’s 
Treatise on Poultry. 
CULTURE OF MADDER. 
The quantity of madder consumed annually in 
the United Sta'tes, and imported from abroad, is 
perfectly astonishing to those who have given no 
attention to the subject. Unfortunately, our pub¬ 
lic records do not give very exact information on 
the subject; but Mr. Ellsworth, as the nearest ap¬ 
proximation he could obtain, gives the amount as 
five thousand tons ! Estimating this at the low 
average price of ten cents per pound, it makes the 
round sum of one million of dollars paid annually 
to foreign countries for an article that can be pro¬ 
duced as good and as cheap at home—paid, too, 
by a people loaded down with indebtedness, and 
disgraced by the forfeiture of plighted obligations! 
The cultivation of madder has heretofore been 
represented as a tedious and laborious operation. 
