Young chickens are subject to a great many diseases, but if they are kept dry and warm, and if they have dry food, most of the troubles may be avoided.  With all poultry, lice are a great pest.  Old fowls can dust themselves and in a measure keep the pest in check, but little chicks are comparatively helpless.  The big gray lice will be found on a chick’s neck near the head.  The remedy for this is to grease the feathers with vaseline on the head and neck.  The small white lice can be controlled by dusting the chicks with insect powder and by keeping the brooder absolutely clean.  A weekly coat of whitewash to which some carbolic acid has been added will keep lice in check in poultry houses and is an excellent plan.  Hen-hatched chicks are usually more subject to lice than those hatched In incubators and raised in brooders, as they become infected from the mother.  Some people say that chicks have lice on them when they are hatched, but this is not so.

The first two weeks of a chick’s life are the important time.  If they are chilled or neglected they never get over it, but will develop into weaklings.  There are many rules and remedies for doctoring sick chickens, but the best way is to kill them.  This is especially so in cases of roup or colds.  The former is a very contagious disease and unless checked may kill an entire pen of chickens.  A man who raises 25,000 chickens annually once told me that “the best medicine for a sick chicken is the axe.”

A very low fence will hold small chicks from straying away, but it must be absolutely tight at the bottom, as a very small opening will allow them to get through.  Avoid all corners or places where they can be caught fast.  The mesh of a wire fence must be fine.  Ordinary chicken wire will not do.

[Illustration:  A home-made chicken coop built on the “scratching-shed” plan]

A brooder that will accommodate fifty chicks comfortably for eight weeks will be entirely too small even for half that number after they begin to grow.  As soon as they can get along without artificial heat, the chickens should be moved to a colony house and given free range.  They will soon learn to roost and to find their way in and out of their new home, especially if we move away the old one where they cannot find it.

A chicken coop for grown fowls can be of almost any shape, size, or material, providing that we do not crowd it to more than its proper capacity.  The important thing is to have a coop that is dry, easily cleaned and with good ventilation, but without cracks to admit draughts.  A roost made of two by four timbers set on edge with the sharp corners rounded off is better than a round perch.  No matter how many roosts we provide, our chickens will always fight and quarrel to occupy the top one.  Under the roost build a movable board or shelf which may easily be taken out and cleaned.  Place the nest boxes under this board, close to the ground.  One nest