Keowee courier. [volume] (Pickens Court House, S.C.) 1849-current, 1906-05-09
The Care Of Poultry.

ther he should feed his horse corn,
cotton seed, or table scraps. But
how many feed the hen at regular
Z times on good feed
AT the present time the chicken of
the United States is giving us annu.
ally about four hundred million dol.
lars worth of meat and eggs. How
much more would she yield If she
could only gel the right food at sea
sonable times? She needs her food
when she can use it best. Should
chickens not have feed in box in
stead OF the dirt, and why should
tkshhunt for water in muddy places
aAllystrink of slop buckets? Why
should the chickens not have a
warm breakfast and warm water
when snow and ice abound? Why
should the little ones be allowed TO
run in poison dew and be forced TO
eat corn meal when corn fattens, to
the detriment of growth?
Unless chickens have a warm roost
they cannot lay much, and unless the
little ones are kept from cold they
remain small. When the comb of a
hen is frost bitten she stops laying
for a long time. In April and May
the hens cackle aud scratch and lay
and eggs are cheap, and whyp Be-
cause the hen is warmed and finds
the proper feed The hens would
act the same way in December and
January, when eggs are at Christ
mas prices, if she was only kept in a
warm house at night and on frosty
mornings and days and feed on the
same kind of food they get in spring
time. Collar,ls answer for spring
grass and beef meal for insects. No
farmer in Oconee can keep his farm
free from mortgage and at the same
time keep enough hens roosting in
trees in January TO pay his board.
Miss Sturt's bantam, which recently
sold for $275, was not "tree rooster"
In Indiana a man, by State law,
cal be fined for certain cruelty to
chickens. In South Carolina be-
lieve he is not fined for anything he
may do to chicken, but every man
pays fine when, by cruelty, he
makes one of his hens wild. The
wild hen never pays. When a man
is cruel to boy the boy leaves home
and the parent is loser. A COW
daily kicked gives little milk. A
dog treated cruelty is little protec-
tion. Just 80, a wild chicken roams
away from home and is in danger in
the hawk range. Her little ones
grow to be wild and often in the
mothers fright they are trampled
upon. The nests are stolen out and
the eggs often lost. Keep all the
chickens tame and they will give you
a fine dividend on kindness.
In sickness chickens are never to
be abandoned, and it pays to care for
disease before it comes. At the ST.
Louis Worlds Fair there were many
thousands Of birds on exhibition.
They were kept and returned to
their owners hundreds and thou
sands of miles away and not one
dozen were lost by illness. Now
and then a chicken will die, but
there is no reason for wholesale
death in the chicken yard. Clean
roos,s, sound feed and pure drinking
""eS' "'S SSN'" W PlSNShC NiStdsc.
Cholera is not common, but con-
tagious. The roosts should be
cleaned each day and lime thrown
about and the refuse buried, the
dead fowls burnt and few drops of
carbolic acid put in the drinking
water. Polk root should be parched,
PMlverized and pint put in every
gallon of food. This done, the
cholera will soon go.
Roup is perhaps the worst and the
most common and certainly the most
dreaded of all diseases in poultry
dom. 1t descends from sire to son,
and a chicken which has it once is
never good for breeding purposes.
1t, too, is contagious and many poul-
trymen say the axe is the best rem
edy. However, its spreading can be
stopped and many times most effected
fowls saved. This disease is catarrh,
resulting from cold, usually caused
ny roosting in damp place or in
Araft. 1t appears in the form of
gapes, sore head, swollen eyes,
wheeling, drowsiness, sore mouth,
etc. The remedy: Stop the cracks /
in the roosting bouse, making it
clean and dry. Put some gum
camphor in the drinking water and
sometimes instead of that, put in
kerosene. Put few drops of tur-
pentine in the food. Put down the
n nhioGan,o thrnot f,,;oo ~ To-, y.