1907.] DISCUSSION, 55 



land they must naturally be pretty close together, so we have 

 to take this precaution in order to keep them from going from 

 one coop to another, whereas if we had only a few to go from 

 one coop to another we would not have to take this precaution. 

 I think, in my own opinion, that this is the main point, and the 

 secret in poultry raising is about this: hatch your chickens 

 out early, keep them growing, and keep them free from disease, 

 if possible. Roup is the worst disease that we have because the 

 climate is damp and the soil is damp. Keep them from crowd- 

 ing, and your chickens will come around all right in the fall, 

 and begin to lay when eggs are worth money. 



Now one word in regard to the houses. My houses are 

 similar to all the houses in my neighborhood. They are all 

 simply colony coops made out of plain hemlock boards. The 

 majority of them are only battened on the roof, and some not 

 even that. A great many of them are not battened on the side 

 at all. They are practically open coops, as you might say, or 

 cold houses. I do not think there is any need of having any 

 open fronts. It is all open enough so that they can get all the 

 fresh air they need. I never have had any particular trouble 

 with roup or any disease of the sort. I well remember about 

 five years ago, I think, that we had a very cold snap about the 

 first day of December. I had just put some pullets into some 

 new houses that I had got, and they were not battened at all on 

 the side. The lumber that was used was quite green when the 

 house was put up, so that the cracks were quite wide. We fully 

 intended to put in a little paper just around where the roosts 

 came, and also back of the nests, but this snap coming on so 

 early in the season it had not been done. The pullets in that 

 house were laying pretty well, and we got from eighteen to 

 twenty eggs a day. The next morning I got up feeling pretty 

 sick. I concluded that those birds were done for. That day 

 we went around four or five times to pick up the eggs to keep 

 them from freezing in the nests, and I was very much sur- 

 prised to find that the birds did not slack up in their laying. 

 They went right along just as though nothing had happened. 

 And we made up our minds that if they could stand that snap 

 they would get along for the rest of the winter. The result 

 was that although we had the expectation of placing a little 

 strip of paper right back of the nests so that they would be 

 reasonably comfortable, they were never fixed at all. Although 



