Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 157, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 July 1918 — GAS FRITZ IN HENHOUSE. [ARTICLE]

GAS FRITZ IN HENHOUSE.

You were appealed to, for the sake of your country’s needs, to grow more poultry. You have grown more poultry. Now, the object in having more poultry grown was not to furnish more feed for lice and mites. If you allow the vermin to flourish, they will consume not only the chicken meat that ought to release other meats for the soldiers overseas, but they will shut off the egg supply. Hens infested with lice and mites will not produce eggs in summer. Getting rid of the pests is a fairly simple matter. Lime around house and yard, a dust bath for the hens, plenty of sunlight and air, a little chemical treatment for any hens that may have become infested — that’s all. Drudgery? Well, while you are slopping lime around or putting pinches of powder into the feathers of a hen, just play like your are gassing Germans. It amounts to that, in the long run. The United States department of agriculture will furnish detailed information as to how to do IL % 6 '

Study to Serve. Poultry keeping, although a comparatively simple undertaking, will be successful in direct proportion to the study and labor which are expended upon it. There is an abundance of good material on the subject, but “Back-Yard Poultry Keeping” (Farmers’ Bulletin 889), a recent publication of the United States department of agriculture, contains all the general directions needed to make a start. It tells how to overcome the objections to keeping poultry In the city, what kinds of fowls to keep, the size of the flock computed according to the size of the back yard, gives definite instructions as to the best kinds of chicken houses to build, with bill of materials for same, directions as to feeding the fowls, hatching and raising chicks, prevention of diseases and pests, and many other matters essential to the success of the undertaking. Another helpful bulletin of a general character Is “Hints to Poultry Raisers” (Farmers’ Bulletin 528). This gives a great deal of useful and authoritative information within a very small compass.

Houses and Nests. If a better grade of housing Is desired than -that afforded by piano boxes and packing cases, full directions may-ba-obtained from “Poultry House Construction” (Farmers’ Bulletin 574). If one desires to keep records of the egg production of the individual hens, trap nests are a great convenience. These nests are so arranged that the hen Is confined after entering until released by an attendant. Full directions for making them are contained in Farmers’ Bulletin 682, entitled “A Simple Trap Nest for Poultry.” Choice of a Variety. Successful' poultrymen agree that the male at the head of the flock should always be pure bred, even if the whole flock is not. Certain breeds are best for egg production, and certain others for meat production, while still another class contains the generalpurpose breeds. These classes are carefully described and illustrated in two bulletins of the department of agriculture, Varieties of Chickens” (Fanners’ Bulletins 806 and 898 X Guineas are marketed late in the summer, when they weigh from Ito 1% pounds at about two and one-half months of age, and also throughout the fall, when the demand is for heavier birds, t