HOUSES FOR LAYERS. 4? 



over it keeps out rain, and wire cloth of one-eightli-inch 

 mesh breaks the force of entering air in case of high 

 winds, though ordinarily the current will be outward. 

 Fresh air is admitted through the passage, C, and as it 

 must enter the feed room through an outside door in 

 the latter, and pass several angles before gaining admis- 

 sion to the roosting room, strong drafts are avoided. 

 Care must be taken, during cold spells, to partially close 

 this door at night, so as to raise the temperature at the 

 roost about twenty degrees higher than it is outside, but 

 further than this no effort should be made to retain 

 heat at the risk of impure air. Fowls that have free 

 range in the daytime the year round, and roost in build- 

 ings open on all sides in summer, and partially open in 

 spring and fall, will not be injured by an attempt to 

 strike a balance between warmth and ventilation during 

 a few brief periods of extreme cold. An artificial sum- 

 mer in winter, obtained by means of a furnace and hot 

 water pipes, for laying stock and for chicks artificially 

 reared, has its uses in the intensive system, to be 

 described further on, but is dispensed with in the exten- 

 sive or colonization plan. 



The house for layers, summer arrangement, is illus- 

 trated in Fig. 10. In this the feed box is seen in the 

 foreground, and the doors in both roofs of the house are 

 propped up a little, as in cases of extremely hot weather. 

 It will be found that the birds will seek the protection 

 of a building thus arranged, for shade, when the heat is 

 severe, in preference to any other place. In summer 

 the grain is buried under a profuse allowance of straw, 

 by the use of a horserake and hay tedder, or under the 

 soil, by means of the tine and short-toothed harrow or 

 the barbed wire drag used in pulverizing earth for gath- 

 ering, as before mentioned. 



Figure 13 represents a house for the earliest hatched 

 pullets that are expected to lay more in winter than the 



