32 



There are many advantages in using several small movable colony houses for 

 rearing chickens. 



(1) There is no loss of time in teaching the chicks to go from a small coop to 

 a larger one. Movable brooders are used inside the house, and when no more heat 

 is required these are taken out. About this time low, flat perches are put in the 

 house ; the chicks soon commence perching, and thus prevent crowding. A hundred 

 chicks can be put in a house. This house will accommodate fifty chickens of about 

 four or five pounds weight, or until large enough to be fattened or put into laying 

 quarters. Usually some birds are sold as broilers, hence there is not much over- 

 crowding. 



(2) The chickens can be reared on a portion of the farm, where a full crop as 

 well as a crop of chickens can be grown. This usually means new land each season 

 for the chickens, which in turn means stronger and better birds reared with less 

 grain. It also may mean the destruction of many injurious insects. We use the corn 

 fields, pasture fields, and orchards, or any similar condition under which a crop of 

 chickens and an additional crop can be obtained from the land during the same 

 season. Chickens grown on the same land year after year do not thrive as well as 

 those grown on new ground each year. 



(3) Should the chickens at any time become destructive they can be moved. 

 We have raised chickens in tomato fields, and if they develop the habit of destroying 

 ripe tomatoes, all that is necessary to avoid further trouble is to shut the chickens 

 in at night, and next day draw the house to a new field and open the door. The 

 chickens will come home to the colony house to roost. 



(4) Where there has been considerable grain shelled on the field during 

 harvest, the chickens can be easily moved to the field, and there they will gather 

 the grain. 



(5) Any vermin that might worry the chickens at night can be easily kept out 

 by shutting the door. 



(6) During rainy or bad weather, the chickens have a place for shelter. This 

 is very important early in the spring and late in the fall. 



Cost of Eearing. 



We were able, during the season of 1909, to keep an exact record of the birds 

 grown in the pasture field, and of those grown in the orchard. The chickens in the 

 pasture field were hatched during the first two weeks in May. Three hundred and 

 forty-five birds were grown to maturity or to a size suitable for fattening. We 

 began to remove the cockerels from the field to the fattening pens on August the 

 25th. The pullets and cockerels held as breeders were all taken from the field by 

 the 22nd of October. The breeds reared were Orpingtons, Wyandottes, Plymouth 

 Rocks, Leghorns, etc. They consumed 4,304 lbs. of grain ; of this about one-third 

 would be dry mash, nearly 300 lbs. chick feed, and the balance wheat, corn and 

 hulled oats in the proportion of two and a half, two and one. There was five per 

 cent, of beef scrap added to the dry mash. The birds were weighed when taken 

 from the field, weighing 3,341 lbs., or one pound of chicken representing 3.2 lbs. of 

 grain. Some of the breeding cockerels weighed over seven pounds, and the Leghorn 

 pullets did not average three pounds in weight. We removed most of the cockerels 

 at about a three and one-half pound weight, or when they would fatten most 

 economically. 



The chickens reared in the orchard varied more in age. The first were hatched 

 on the 25th April, and the last on July 6th. Most of the birds were hatched in 



