The brooder house should be thoroughly cleaned and the litter changed once every 7 days, or oftener if disease occurs, regardless of the type of litter used. This cleaning schedule must be adhered to rigidly if blackhead, coccidiosis, and other diseases are to be prevented. Thoroughly clean and disinfect brooder houses and equipment used for turkeys at the end of each brooding season or oftener if disease occurs. First clean the house thoroughly and burn all litter and droppings or haul them to land that is not to be used for poultry and from which there will be no drainage into the turkey range. Then scrub the floor and sides of the house, if it is of board construction, with boiling hot lye solution (one-third of a can to a pail of water) and allow them to dry out. Next, thoroughly spray the entire inside of the building with a 3- or 4-percent solution of cresol compound or any other approved disinfectant. Give the same treatment once a year to the quarters occupied by the breeding stock. The "fire gun", a large kerosene torch which involves the blow-torch principle, has proved to be valuable in disinfecting, if it is properly used and the house has been thoroughly cleaned. LITTER Sand or gravel is recommended for litter for the first 2 or 3 weeks; after that, clean wheat straw is advised as a means of saving labor. Gravel or sand makes the best litter; but with large flocks, using it for more than 2 or 3 weeks may require too much labor. Straw or hay, if used during the first 2 weeks, may cause a stunting of growth and a high mortality. Many growers have been successful in using, as a substitute for litter, 1/2-inch wire mesh stretched tightly a few inches above the floor of the house, but it requires much labor to clean this, and it seems to have no advantage over clean litter. A wire-floored sun porch makes a good substitute, for an outside yard during the brooding period although, as previously stated, a clean yard in grass is preferable. EARLY DEVELOPMENT The poults, when first hatched, are covered with soft down. When they are about 10 days old, feathers begin to appear where the wings join the body, and in about 3 weeks the tail feathers begin to appear. From then on feather growth is rapid, and when the poults are 2 months old they are well feathered. About the fifth week fleshy protuberances called caruncles begin to appear, and by the seventh week they begin to extend down the neck. The appearance of caruncles in the poults is termed "shooting the red." On the top of the head of both males and females a fleshy protuberance develops into what is called the "dew bill" or "snood"; on males it is larger and more elastic than on females.