AMERICAN PO UL TR Y-HO USES. 



Fig. 12 shows a portable detached scratch- 

 ing-shed house, as used on many large Ameri- 

 can poultry establishments. The house and 

 shed are separate, each being ten feet wide and 

 mounted on runners, so as to be hauled about 

 when required, and the doors are shown thrown 

 wide open as in summer. Ranges of houses 

 upon the same plan were used on the same farm, 

 with yards 20 x 100 feet in front of each. Such 

 ranges are very commonly erected upon a plan 

 figured and recommended by Mr. A. F. Hunter, 

 formerly editor of Farm Poultry, and put up 

 by him on his own farm at South Natick. In 

 Fig. 13 is given sufficient of such a range of 

 houses, from a photograph, to show how they 

 are built in pairs. The size in this case is 



Scratching- 

 Sheds with 

 Corridor. 



intolerable. Some of them prefer the detached 

 houses of Fig. 12 ; others have tried halving the 

 doors by placing the shed in front of the house 

 as in Fig. 10; this, however, nar- 

 rows the yard far too much, as 

 already hinted. The majorit\- who 

 keep large numbers prefer the " cor- 

 ridor " plan, and endeavour to combine it with 

 the scratching-shed. In itself this presents no 

 difficulty, and Fig. 14 gives an elevation and 

 ground plan of half a building put up by Mr. 

 C. H. Latham, who reared Plymouth Rocks 

 at Lancaster, Mass., showing one of the two 

 wings, each 180 feet long, stretching out from 

 the central food and cooking-house. ]\Ir. 

 Latham had been in the business a long time, 



=-=,^. 



FRONT LLtVATION. 



Fig. 14.— Mr. C. H. Latham's Poultry Plant. 



8x10 feet for the closed house, which has a very 

 large window, and lOxiO feet for the shed at 

 the side, the yards extending 125 feet in front of 

 each. A feature of this range of buildings is 

 that all partitions, between houses and sheds, 

 and the contiguous pairs of each, have double 

 swing-doors at the front end, and fly iiack by 

 a spring to the proper position. Thus the 

 attendant can walk along the front of all, by 

 pushing open the doors and letting them swing 

 back behind him, with as little disturbance as 

 possible to the hens which may be in the nests 

 or roost at the back. This construction of a 

 long range with high front, low back, and swing- 

 doors all along the front, is generally known as 

 the " Hunter scratching-shed plan." The fowls 

 roost at the low back of the closed houses, and 

 in very cold weather it is customary to draw 

 down curtains in front of the roost to confine 

 the space and check radiation. 



Many of the most practical poultry-farmers 

 of America, however, and especially some of 

 those running the largest establishments, find 

 the numerous swinging-doors of this system 



and previously built two poultry plants ; for 

 this, his third, he moved to another location a 

 little way off to begin de novo, with the ex- 

 pressed determination this time "to build right," 

 according to his light and the experience he 

 had acquired. The timber houses are raised a 

 foot above ground upon a stone and mortar 

 foundation, as is usual in the best American 

 establishments. Each pen has a closed house 

 8x10 feet and a shed 10 x 10 feet, facing south ; 

 and at the back, or north wall, is a corridor four 

 feet wide. This is not wired at all, but solid board 

 all along and over, so that when closed at 

 night it forms a dead-air space to keep warm. 

 From it a door opens into every house and 

 shed, and there is also an outer door about 

 every sixty feet into the corridor from the outer 

 waggon-drive. Feeding and watering are all 

 done from the corridor, the mash being placed 

 in a trough which rocks back towards the 

 corridor for filling, and then falls back by its 

 weight into the shed, at the same time closing 

 the aperture ; the water-pan is also put through 

 a door on to its shelf. The corridor wall also 



