The RURAL NEW-VORKER 
531 
The Henyard 
Ailing Fowls 
1 have something among my hens 
which resembles cholera, only they die 
suddenly. They get pasted around the 
vent with yellowish '.discharge; combs 
turn dark, but they do not droop around; 
they will eat at night and be dead the 
next morning. I feed Cornell mash and 
corn, oats and wheat; at present they 
are laying 45 per cent. Will you ad¬ 
vise a treatment? w. M. 
Hurlock, Md. 
All diarrheas aare not due to cholera, 
in fact, few’ of them are. There are va¬ 
rious disorders of the digestive organs 
that result in diarrhea and some are suf¬ 
ficiently .serious to cause death. It is not 
possible to tell from the mere fact that 
combs turn dark and diarrhea follows, 
moval of the lodged egg, if that proves 
necessary, after which the bird may be 
given a dose of Epsom salts, a small tea¬ 
spoonful, removed from the flock and 
lightly fed, with plenty of green stuff, un¬ 
til recovery. 
2. These varieties probably cannot re¬ 
place the Leghorns on farms run for com¬ 
mercial egg production, though they may 
be excellent varieties in themselves. The 
breed is not the only thing to consider; 
the length of time and work taken to es¬ 
tablish the required characteristics in the 
breed as a whole must be taken into ac¬ 
count when commercial production is in¬ 
volved. Many Jersey herds excel some 
land. Any article or information further 
on this subject would be very interesting 
to me, also undoubtedly to hundreds of 
small farmers with little or no help. 
Portsmouth, X. II. n. f. w. 
I did not write the article referred to, 
but I can tell you how farmers in my 
section get clover to catch and thrive. It 
is by the liberal use of lime, say a ton of 
burned or two tons of ground limestone 
per acre. I,ess often proves useful, more 
may not be any too much. Our land, like 
all long-cultivated soil, is deficient in 
available lime, and clover or Alfalfa does 
not do well on sour soil. Even in the 
limestone regions of our State, where 
great limestone rocks underlie the surface 
and crop out in ledges, lime is needed in 
available form near the surface, and 
farmers there who raise Alfalfa year after 
year find it necessary to apply ground or 
give me different plans and suggestions 
for same? d. r. w. 
Unadilla Forks, N. Y. 
Dampness of the interior of a poultry- 
house is nearly always due, not to water 
seeping through the floor, but to lack of 
sufficient ventilation to permit the escape 
of moisture laden air from the building. 
The remedy, whatever system of ventila¬ 
tion is used, is more ventilation, and this, 
in a building ventilated by windows, 
means more windows or more widely 
opened windows, usually the latter. Bur¬ 
lap is not a good ventilating medium. 
My suggestions for a new poultry-house 
would be a deeper one than you now have, 
at least 20 ft., with either the same type 
of roof, a shed roof, or one of the half¬ 
monitor type. From your description, I 
judge that you have a good building, but 
one with an insufficient number of win- 
Setting Fence I*outs—An Earlg Sieving Job on the Farm 
with death, just what the disorder is. It 
would probably be good treatment of this 
flock to give it a physic of Epsom salts, 
1 lb. for each 100 fowls. This should be 
dissolved in what drinking water the 
flock will consume during the day and 
given in that way. I should not expect 
it to cure sick fowls, but rather to fore¬ 
stall trouble in those not affected but 
likely to be. M. B. D. 
Drop in Laying 
1 I have a flock of While Leghorns, 
hatched May 1, that produced 120 eggs 
per day by December 15. They started 
to lay when exactly four months old. The 
first cold snap they took cold, but I cured 
them within a week and brought them 
back to over 100 eggs per day. The next 
cold wave froze the tips of their combs 
about Ys in. which checked their laying 
considerably. About February 1, I no¬ 
ticed they had started to molt, and now 
production averages about four dozen eggs 
per day. What could be the cause of 
them molting and would you advise dis¬ 
posing of them now or retaining them to 
produce hatching eggs? They are still• 
paying for their keep, but how long, ap¬ 
proximately, will it be until they return 
to full production? My house is new 
and of the open-front type, 16 ft. square. 
I use muslin curtains during the cold 
weather, clean out thoroughly every 
week. H. A. b. 
Ringtown, Pa. 
Anything which upsets the nerves of a 
flock of laying pullets is likely to bring 
about a partial molt, with check in egg 
production. Just how it does it. I don’t 
know, and I am not absolutely sure that 
it is always a case of “nerves,” but that 
is a handy explanation, at any rate. Sud¬ 
den changes in the ration, moving the 
flock to other quarters, or other changes 
in care may bring on this molt. For 
that reason, poultrymen are careful to 
make any needed changes in food or care 
gradually, not going from one thing to an¬ 
other in a jump. Very likely you will 
upon going over the history of your care 
of this flock for the past few months, 
find some point at which you made some 
more or less radical change, which 
change was followed by the molt. I 
should certainly not dispose of the flock 
now; they will come back and as it is 
almost Spring, I should be safe in pre¬ 
dicting an early return to full produc¬ 
tion. I note that you “cured” these 
birds when they had a cold in the Fall; 
I wonder if you really cured them, or 
whether nature did the job while you 
thought you were the active agent. Fall 
colds are usually promptly recovered 
from if the birds are kept in sanitary 
quarters and given good care. M. B. D. 
Poultry Questions 
1. Within two days I had four cases 
of protruding oviducts in a flock of 150 
Leghorns. What treatment is advised? 
2. What is your opinion regarding Cam- 
pines and Lakenvelders? I understand 
that these breeds are hardier and a little 
heavier than Leghorns, and wish to know 
whether there are any reasons against 
breeding these varieties for eggs? 3. 
What is considered a normal yearly per¬ 
centage of loss for matured birds? 4. Do 
you recommend acid of phosphate on 
droppings boards? What elements are 
lacking in chicken manure to make it a 
complete fertilizer? 5. Would you ad¬ 
vise building a semi-monitor house 30 ft. 
deep? Are there any sound reasons 
against this type of house in this climate? 
T. M. s. 
1. There is little that you can do in a 
bad ease of eversion of the oviduct, be¬ 
cause of inflammation of the parts. The 
protruding mass may he cleansed and 
oiled and replaced, after breaking and re¬ 
Holstein herds in milk production, but 
that does not mean that it would be wise 
to substitute Jerseys for Holsteins if 
quantify of milk is the end in view. 
3. nv normal loss in laying flocks may 
run around 10 per cent. 
4. Poultry manure is rich in nitrogen, 
lacking in phosphorous and potash. Acid 
phosphate used upon the droppings boards 
and mixed with the manure would supply 
the first lack, wood ashes or some com¬ 
mercial form of potash the second, thus 
balancing the fertilizer. Wood ashes 
should not be mixed with poultry manure 
until just before its application to the 
soil, if at all, however, as the lime in it 
tends to set free the nitrogen of the poul¬ 
try manure and permit it to escape as 
ammonia. 
5 The half-monitor is a suitable type 
of roof for a poultry-house 30 ft. deep, 
and I know of no sound objection to it for 
such a deep building. m. b. d. 
Clover on Sod 
Quite a while ago in a main article in 
Tke R. N.-Y. mention was made of get¬ 
ting clover to catch and prosper on sod 
burned lime to get the best results. Sev¬ 
eral years ago I slaked a small pile of 
stone lime in the backyard, preparatory 
to using it upon a field. The next year 
the irregular outlines of the base of this 
pile of lime were clearly defined by a 
growth of White clover which covered the 
ground where the lime lay, to the ex¬ 
clusion of other grass ; a very strong hint 
that, if I wanted clover in that yard, I 
would do well to give tin* soil a feeding of 
lime. If clover fails, when other con¬ 
ditions for its growth appear to be favor¬ 
able, try an aplication of lime to the soil. 
You will probably be highly pleased with 
the result. m. b. d. 
Damp Henhouse 
I have a henhouse 17 ft. wide, 34 ft. 
long, 4 ft. high in back. 6 ft. in front, and 
8 ft. high from floor to peak. It has a 
hip roof, and three large windows that 
open in at the top; burlap over half of 
the door. It is damp most of the time. 
Is there anything that I can do? If I 
covered the floor with tarred paper and 
cover it with 2 or 3 in. of good cement, 
would it help? I am thinking of putting 
up a new henhouse next Fall. Would you 
dovvw in front. A still deeper building, 
however, is more comfortable for the 
fowls and cheaper to build, since, other 
dimensions being the same, the more near¬ 
ly square a poultry-house, the less lumber 
required for it. A concrete floor is desir¬ 
able, and this should be under-drained by 
a layer of field stones, or raised above the 
level of the surrounding ground. The 
modern tendency in poultry-house con¬ 
struction is away from the old narrow 
and long buildings and toward the deep, 
more nearly square type, a tendency 
which I believe to be desirable. M. b. d. 
Farmers Organizing in Idaho 
Mr. and Mrs. Berrang of the ox-team 
express, stopped over with me a few days 
enroute in November. I was very busy 
harvesting the sugar beets, so we could 
not visit much. Mrs. Berrang was not 
well, but was impatient to get the journey 
over. Mr. Berrang thinks “we will have 
to do it ourselves.” I am busy this Win¬ 
ter organizing the Sugar Beet Growers’ 
Association. Here it means bucking the 
Mormon church. Yours for doing it our¬ 
selves, c . o. G. 
Idaho. 
