1907.] POULTRY DISEASES. 37 



fresh air houses. Perhaps some of you have seen the plans. 

 The general plan of such a house is that the front is open all 

 the time. At that time we had just had thaw enough so that I 

 could have the post holes dug. I put up two houses, eight by 

 fourteen, with seven and one-half foot studding in the center, 

 about four and one-half to five feet in the rear, and three feet 

 between the sill and the plate in front. On the entire front a 

 space of three by eight is covered with absolutely nothing but 

 wire screen. The roosts are in the back part of the house, and 

 the dropping board almost on a level with the bottom of the 

 front plate. No wind ever gets back on those roosts above 

 that dropping board. I know of perhaps twenty-five or thirty 

 farms where they have adopted that style of a house. When I 

 first commenced to put them up I had some misgivings as to 

 their success. I did not know whether I was going to be able 

 to take a good big dose of my own medicine or not, and, as I 

 say, I had some misgivings as to the effect upon my fowls. 

 They had been kept in a house with an ordinary double-pitched 

 roof, a house wnth the windows open, one window in each 

 always being open, that of an ordinary twelve-light sash 

 being open. Those houses were pretty wann. I thought that 

 this fresh air house, as we called it, was going to be a good 

 deal colder in spite of all my theorizing. I put my birds out 

 there. I exoected to have trouble with those birds, because 

 they had always been kept warm. However, I put them out 

 there, and the day that I put them out there the thermometer 

 went down to about ten below^ zero, and I w^ent out the next 

 morning expecting to find some of those birds badly frozen. 

 I did not find any, and they appeared as bright and as healthy- 

 looking as ever. Well, it set me to thinking, and I began to 

 watch those birds. I did not find that they stuck their heads 

 under their wings as I expected. I have been watching the 

 same thing in different poultry plants that have adopted these 

 houses, and I have found that the hens on the outer roosts — 

 in the most of the houses there are three roosts, but the hens 

 on the outer roost roost with their backs toward the open 

 front. Now, naturally, from the way that a hen's feathers are 

 put on, if there was much cold or wind coming from the open 

 front they would face it, but you almost always find them with 

 their backs towards the front. Upon going in there, of course, 

 you naturally get a different atmosphere from above year 



