Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 291, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 December 1916 — POULTRY [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

POULTRY

OVERCROWDING POULTRY FLOCK Disease, Parasites and Nonproductive ness Chief Resulting Evils As the observing poultryman grows in years and experience he becomes convinced more and more that if there is one mistake made by poultry raisers that causes more loss and grief than any other, it is overcrowding. The flock that is overcrowded Js subjected at once to nearly alt the profit killing ills that poultry is heir to, while on the other hand plenty ol room is the best and cheapest remedy for troubles caused by crowding. Perhaps the greatest evil resulting from overcrowding is the tendency towards disease of all kinds, especially infectious ailments. This is to be expected, not only because the close proximity of the birds aids disease to spread readily from one to another, but also because of the impossibility of maintaining sanitary conditions, whether the birds ar? indoors or out, or whether the season is summer or winter.

Some poultrymen have the mistaken idea that because their birds are in an open pen out of doors a little crowding will do no harm. Ventilation is important, but so-are some other factors. The worst evil in close yarding is that the ground becomes foul so quickly. Being forced to stand, scratch or pick up feed in their own filth is a sure means of bringing trouble and plenty of iL There are poultry raisers who think flat crowding in the house in winter will do no harm, just so the birds are warm. In fact, some few persons believe that some crowding in the winter is a good thing, because it insures warmth, through the birds huddling together. This is as tyad or worse than crowding out of doors. Another of the evils of close yard <ng is that this means idle birds. Sucn a bird is not a good producer and, worse than that idleness encourages J_e worst of vices and habits with which the poultryman has to contend. Chief among these are egg eating and leather picking. Bo_h habits are exceedingly difficult to eradicate, once they break out. The best way to discourage these habits arid break them is to keep the birds busy scratching for their feed and be sure that they have the proper variety of food. Should these measures fall of a cure the habit is an incurable one and the offender bad better be disposed of. A third evil from overcrowding especially in warm weather, is the favorable conditions it affords to parasites of all kinds. Unless a constant warfare on these pests is kept up, the crowded poultry house* or yard, including the birds, will soon be found to be literally alive with lice anl mites. The parasite problem Is a comparatively simple one in flocks that have plenty of room, due to a large extent to the fact that there is plenty oi opportunity for these birds to dust themselves, and expect possibly at night, they are away from all places that harbor the pests. There are precautions that the poultryman may take to overcome or avoid tre evils of crowded quarters, such as spading up the yards frequently, providing plenty of clean scratching litter, fumigating the house frequently and keeping scrupulously clean. But the better plan is to cut down the size of the flock to the proper capac ity of the quarters. A hundred hens tn an overcrowded house or pen will not lay as many eggs as will 50 hens that have enough room. Yet the 100 birds will eat twice as much as the 60, cause twice as much work and probably more than twice as much worry. There are m ay poultry raisers who have from fifty to one hundred or more birds who would make more clear profit with 10 birds and do it with only a fraction of the work, but they have the mistaken idea that numbers Is the thing that counts. They take a certain pride in being able to say they have a flock of 100 hens, when many of them would be better off by far If they only had 15 or two dozen.