Evening Republican, Volume 19, Number 204, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 August 1915 — KILL ENEMY OF BABY [ARTICLE]

KILL ENEMY OF BABY

DUTY OF ALL 18 TO DO AWAY WITH THE FLY. As a Disseminator of Diseaso It Is Recognized That This Pest Can In No Way Find an Equal.

(Prepared by the Children’* Bureau, United State* Department of Labor. > No one likes to have a single fly and, much less, a swarm of them buzzing about him, or lighting on his food. But in addition to being r. nuisance, the fly is also a real source of danger, owing to the fact that he may carry the germs of disease from the sick to the well. Typhoid fever is known to be distributed'in this way, and it is believed that other forms of illness, including diarrhea, are also carried about on the hairy feet and legs of the ordinary house or "typhoid” fly. On this account, it is especially the baby who needs to be protected from flies. Awake or asleep, he needs it. His milk should be kept out of their reach, and his bed or his sleeping room should be carefully screened against them, if it is not possible to have the whole house and the porch screened. v The flies that get into the house in spite of screens should be trapped, poisoned or swatted, but far more effective than any of these measures is that of destroying the fly larvae before they hatch into full-grown flies. The favorite breeding place if the common house fly is in horse manure. In a pile of a thousand pounds there may be half a million maggots ready to hatch, unless they are destroyed in the larval stage, as the eggs are called. Various substances have been suggested for use upon horse manure in order to destroy the fly maggots. Among these are iron sulphate, kerosene, chloride of lime, hellebore and borax. Some of these are too expensive for continued use, and some, such as borax, when used In too large quantities, may be injurious to the crops upon which the manure so treated is used. The United States department of agriculture has recently recommended powdered hellebore as a cheap, safe and effective substance for the treatment of manure. “One-half pound of powdered hellebore mixed with tea, gallons of water is sufficient to kill the larvae in eight bushels, or ten cubic feet of manure. In most places hellebore is obtainable in 100-pound lots at a cost of 11 cents a pound. This makes the cost of the treatment a little less than seven-tenths of a cent per bushel of manure. A liberal estimate of the output of manure is two bushels a day per horse.” After the summer has advanced, the effort must be made to keep each individual home as free from the pest as can be done with screens, fly papers, traps and swatters. Garbage pails must be kept covered, and no refuse of any sort should be allowed to accumulate about the premises, to provide breeding and feeding places. As in most other things, prevention is far better than cure; the time for preventive measures to be most effective is in April and May, when the fly crop is small. There are a great many kinds of fly traps on the market. Such traps can be made at home with little trouble, and the department of agriculture, Washington, will send directions upon request not only for traps, but for methods of destroying the eggs before they hatch into flies. (A homemade fly trap for 20 cents, and Bulletin 245.)