Home Production of Poultry. 359 



increase the receipts." These extravagant hopes may not be 

 realized ; but the Company have leased a "farm" of 16 acres, 

 on which buildings are erected on the plan of Mr. Geyelin, very 

 similar to the Home at Bromley, but on a scale one-third larger 

 and more substantially built. Mr. George Wahab, the Secretary 

 to the Company, informs me that " the building for the breeding 

 stock is 300 feet long by 30 feet wide, divided by a glass-covered 

 way 8 feet wide up the centre, having fifty compartments on 

 each side, 25 at bottom and 25 at top, each 12 feet by 11 feet, 

 with wire runs outside the building. The greatest care has been 

 taken to prevent damp, by drains and by raising the floor with 

 burnt clay, chalk, and earth ; and thorough ventilation is pro- 

 vided by an air-shaft 12 inches in diameter, which runs up the 

 centre of the covered way under the floor, with iron ventilators at 

 every 12 feet. The building is of brick, and roofed with wood 

 and asphalted felt. This building will accommodate at least 

 1000 breeding fowls. The other building is of the same extent, 

 but will be arranged for hatching and fattening, preparing food, 

 &c. Both the buildings are situated upon a gentle slope toward 

 the south, and there is an abundant supply of pure water. The 

 greater part of the stock will be kept in a confined state, but with 

 plenty of air and ventilation. The Company will be able to rear 

 about 10,000 chickens per annum with the 1000 birds only. It 

 is not intended to use incubators for hatching at present ; turkeys 

 will be used for that purpose. The land will be cropped solely 

 to supply the stock with vegetables, of which their food will 

 principally consist." 



Undertakings of this kind will be sources of instruction for 

 farmers in the management of their poultry-yards : and we can 

 assimilate our arrangements as closely as may be to theirs, 

 studying the protection and comfort, and the most suitable 

 dietary for our birds ; economising food and saving labour by 

 properly arranging our houses and timing the different details 

 of attention. What these arrangements should be in ordinary 

 farm-yards, how the general management should be conducted, 

 which are the best breeds of fowls, &c., for different districts or 

 special purposes, and so on, are topics too large for the limits 

 of the present paper, and may well occupy the pages of a prize 

 essay exclusively devoted to this subject. 



My aim has been not to advance anything new to poultry au- 

 thorities, but simply to introduce the question of extended poultry- 

 production to the notice of the readers of the ' Journal,' by setting 

 forth what other people are doing in this branch of industry, and 

 to urge the feasibleness of obtaining profit from feathered stock, 

 not by entering into calculations where figures may be widely 

 at fault, but by citing the example of large classes of persons 



