PLAN No. 382. FUMIGATING HEN-HOUSE STRIPS
A chicken fancier in a small western town, who had used fumigating nest eggs to good purpose, was aware that the roost was fully as favorable to the propagation of chicken-lice as is the nest, and concluded that a fumigating strip along the top of each roost would destroy or rout the vermin from there also.
The composition of which these fumigating strips are made is much more lasting and effective than either liquid or powder preparations, and therefore less expensive. The formula is as follows:
Naphthalin or tar camphor, 1 pound; standard oil of tar, 1⁄2 pint; fine pine sawdust, 3 pounds; plaster of paris, 14 pounds. Mix the first three well together, then put in the plaster. Take about 2 pounds of the mixture at a time, add enough water to make it a stiff paste, and, working rapidly before it sets, roll or mold it into egg-size balls or pour into a mold several feet long to make the strips. Drive nails into the bottom of the mold about one foot apart, so as to leave nail holes in the strip and prevent it from breaking when nailed on. When well hardened nail the strips to the tops of the roosts and they can also be used in lining the nest boxes, the sides of the chicken house, etc.
Through a little advertising in country weeklies and farm and poultry journals he received many orders for both fumigating eggs and strips, the eggs selling for 10 cents each singly, or $1 per dozen, and the strips at 10 cents per foot, or ten feet for 80 cents. They did the work of ridding the hen-houses of vermin. He found it paid him to make it a regular business during the spring months, for it was nearly all profit, and he averaged $100 a month net from this very simple but very effective plan.