86 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Jan., 



through those curtains. The house is absolutely warm enough. 

 You know how it is when you go into a closed house, how often 

 you are struck with that ghastly chill which arises from the 

 dampness created by the breath of the birds, especially if the 

 house is overcrowded, but in an open shed arranged with 

 curtains of this kind no matter how small the pen, you are 

 always sure to get good ventilation, and your fowls are always 

 shielded from the effects of dampness and drafts. There was 

 a man up in Johnstown, N. Y,, that had a variety of bantams 

 that were so delicate that he was afraid that they could not 

 be raised in this country. When he first got them he had 

 doubts whether he would be able to keep them, and sure enough 

 before the winter was over some of those bantams grew sick. 

 He hated to kill them, so he put a part of them in a shed that 

 had no opening and a part of them he put in a coop outside 

 where they were exposed to the air, and, do you know, that 

 those little bantams who were put right out in the open air did 

 the best. He never had any trouble with the variety after that. 

 It seems to me that that was a very good argument. There 

 was another man that I knew of that had two beautiful pens 

 of fowls breeding in a combination house, such as many of 

 you have seen, a house with a closed roof, and all banked up 

 in very much the same way as the ordinary farm henhouse as 

 is usually built. He wanted to make three matings. He had 

 no place for the three separate pens, and so he put one pen in 

 a closed room, and the second and third pens he took outside 

 to a shed. He took his poorest birds and put them out there 

 because he thought he was putting them in the poorest place. 

 What do you suppose happened ? He got more eggs from that 

 poorest pen than he did from either of the others. This 

 picture shows the curtain in about the way we generally use 

 it. I am sorry you cannot all see it. In our state we do not 

 care for the double-pitched roof. If you have money to put 

 into your houses there is no particular objection to making 



