The Southern Farm Gazette

For Mites

EDITOR GAZETTE:

I am practicing medicine, so have little time to read your journal, but enjoy same when I have time to read it. I will distribute samples with pleasure among parties interested. I see in a recent issue where salt is given as a remedy for mites on chickens; and like your other correspondent, wish to give what seems to be the best, cheapest and easiest way to get rid of them—that is, to sprinkle everything with cotton seed meal.

The man that can lie most in Mississippi found this remedy and told it; others did not believe it, but one man learned by experience it was so; and later others, so now it is generally used here. 'Tis well to dust the chickens too.

X. Harrison County.

Editorial comment: From the style of the foregoing letter one would hardly know whether it was jest or earnest, but this remedy has been recommended before by those who say it is a good one for lice and mites. Chickens have been taking dust baths since the memory of man runneth not to the contrary, and killing lice thereby. Dust baths are used by a large proportion of poultry specialists. Possibly the dust in cotton seed meal if it could be ground fine enough would dispose of the pests; and it is also possible that cotton seed meal contains a substance that is poison to lice and mites, as pyrethrum does. Ordinary dust kills lice by stopping up the small holes through which they breathe, which are unlike what we should call nostrils and are easily clogged with dust so that the lice are smothered to death.

Can anybody report more experience with this remedy?