Making Home ProfitableSaint Maur, Kate V. (Kate Vandenhoff)
Science
Making Home Profitable
Saint Maur, Kate V. (Kate Vandenhoff)
Agriculture; Country life
Long ago, when I first started my poultry plant, I found a recipe for
liquid louse exterminator and a worm powder published in some magazine
recommended by Dr. P. T. L. Woods, the great poultry expert. The
liquid is easily made, and very cheap. Dissolve crude naphtha flakes
in kerosene oil. Mothaline and naphtha camphor are two preparations
put up in packages, which can be bought at any drug store, and would
do as well as the flakes, if you have any difficulty in getting them.
A Boston firm puts up a preparation with aromatic naphthalens and
camphor, in packages which cost twenty-five cents, and is very good.
One package dissolved in two gallons of kerosene makes a good mixture
to spray house, nests and roosts. For the birds themselves, paint the
inside of a box with the liquid, and keep a bird in it for from fifteen
to twenty minutes. I had a box made with a compartment one foot square,
so that we could treat six birds at one time. Near the top of each
compartment there is a hole large enough for the bird to put his head
through, and outside we put a trough which is slightly raised from
the ground, so that the birds can just reach the contents. Fill it
with small grain, and they keep busy most of the time, which insures
their not being smothered, and their necks passing through the hole
prevents the fume of the wash escaping too rapidly. Of course, someone
must remain and watch the birds all the time; otherwise there is the
danger of the bird pulling its head in and being suffocated. To be sure
that the bird is perfectly clean, fumigation should be repeated three
times, with an interval of three days after each. If houses are kept
clean and all new birds are thoroughly fumigated before they are turned
into the flock, it will not be necessary to attack the whole flock more
than once or twice a year. Nests for setting hens are always swabbed
out with the mixture, and brood coops get a dose once a week. As soon
as any hen shows signs of getting broody, she is dredged with powder,
which is well rubbed down into the “fluff” of the feathers; then on the
tenth and nineteenth days she is again well powdered, and from the time
the chicks are a week old she receives a dose of powder once a week as
long as she broods them. The recipe for the insect powder is as follows:
To one peck of freshly slaked lime add half an ounce of carbolic
acid. Mix very thoroughly, and add same quantity, in bulk, of tobacco
dust. Another powder recommended by Dr. Woods in the same article,
and which I have used very frequently, is made by mixing equal parts
of finely-sifted coal ashes and tobacco dust, then moisten the whole
with the liquid louse exterminator. Allow it to dry and it is ready for
use. When purchasing carbolic acid, ask for ninety per cent. strength,
otherwise they are very likely to give you a much weaker preparation,
fit only for medical use.
THE SITTING HEN AND THE INCUBATOR
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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