1 Sepr., 1901.] QUEENSLAND AGRICULTURAL JOURNAL. 817 
The cash return for eggs was £19 10s. The cost of feed was £10 Os. 64d., 
and the profit was £9 9s. 6d. 1st May, 1899, to 1900, received for eggs, 
£23 11s. 7d.; twenty old hens, £i; total, £24 11s. 9d. Feed, £12 10s. 6d.; 
profit, £11 1s. id. From 1st May, 190v, to 1901, the eggs brought £26; 
forty old hens and fifteen pair of cockerels, £4 5s. Cost of feed, £16 17s.; 
profit, £13 8s. During June, 1900, my forty hens laid 406 eggs ; in July, 461 
eges, so that a net profit of £13 8s. on the first outlay of forty hens at 1s. 6d. 
each—viz., £3—is not a bad investment; but unless you look after them and do 
not overcrowd them, you will fail to make a profit. I intend to extend m 
flock to about sixty and then draw the line, for during the years 1886 and 188 
‘I kept over 200. when the largest balance I had was £23 2s. 9d., and some of 
the birds I sold at over £2 10s. per pair; so I would advise anyone to start with 
a few, to look after them well, and, when he thoroughly understands the 
business, to increase their numbers. 
SICK CHICKENS. 
American poultry-breeders do not appear to consider it worth while to 
waste time over sick chickens. The Weekly Call, Cal., says:—The best way 
to treat a sick chicken is to kill and bury it. If it is grown, cut off its head, 
selecting a place for the operation where the healthly birds will not get at the 
blood. Bury the bird near a grape vine, if you grow grapes. If it is a deformed 
or sickly chick, do not bother with it, but kill and bury it near a potato plant. 
It will give more profit there than it will in any other way. In most sicknesses 
the fowl is neglected until it has spread the disease. The attempt to doctor it, 
if made at all, should be made as soon as the bird begins to mope. Cholera, the 
worst disease we have to contend with, is spread through the droppings. A 
cholera-infected bird may be kept in the next pen to the healthy stock, with 
only a wire-netting to separate them, and will not spread the disease among 
the flock. 
But the trouble often is, the sick bird is not separated from the flock soon 
enough. A. poultry-raiser of our acquaintance is very successful, and he rightly 
enforces the rule to kill every bird that shows signs of sickness. He says that 
others may spend their time doctoring hens if they wish to, but he has no time 
to do it, and does not care to run the risk of having sick fowls about. 
_ He boasts of raising ninety chickens out of 100. Ina loft in his hen- 
house he keeps a salamander stove, which he can readily heat up, and in that 
stove he burns every sick fowl that he kills. As intimated above, we think a 
dead fowl can be put to better use than that, and not endanger the flock within. 
On a smaller scale I have tried the killing remedy, and it has worked well. Do 
the best we may, and we shall lose chickens, and have some sick fowls. How- 
eyer, cleanliness, extermination of lice, careful feeding, and care not to over- 
crowd, will reduce sickness to the minimum. Much of the trouble that comes to 
the young flock is the result of weak stock, and a weak, sickly chick is better 
dead than alive. Itis folly to breed from a weak stock if we know it, but 
having done it, weeding out the flock is advisable, and a necessity. Save the 
strong chicks and destroy the weak ones. Weed out as heroically as you weed 
out a herd of cattle or sheep. 
EGG-EATING. 
Strictly Ispeaking, this is not a disease, but a bad habit the fowls acquire, 
and when fowls or any other member of the farmyard develop a bad habit, a 
cure is not easy. A crib-biting horse is a nuisance, and so is an egg-eating hen, 
andi when this vice gets into the poultry-yard the loss of eggs and temper by 
the owner is; usually severe. ‘There is, of course, a humorous side to the hens 
