TOWN-LOT FOWLS 



The rear of a city lot can be made to yield both profit and pleas- 

 ure when devoted to poultry and fruit trees, and many families may 

 enjoy fresh eggs and an occasional roast chicken, or a "Christ- 

 massy" chicken pie by simply utilizing some of the vacant space 

 in the rear yards of their homes. 



We sometimes hear that chickens cannot be raised successfully 

 on a city lot because the land is too valuable and that the business 

 will not pay where all the food has to be bought. 



The value of a city lot is often over-estimated when chicken 

 raising is suggested for the back yard, but the question is, what 

 income is your back lot now yielding? 



I expect that the majority of city back lots are either an outlay 

 or an eyesore to their owners. They grow nothing but grass or 

 weeds, for which nothing is received. When mowed there is that 

 expense to it, with the water tax added, which is not inconsiderable. 



As much as I like lawn and flowers in the front of the house, I 

 think the ofttimes neglected back yard should be made valuable also. 

 Nothing to my taste can improve it like fruit trees, which are bene- 

 fited by having poultry around them, and will bring in good re- 

 turns, as I know by experience. 



The main requisite to making a success of poultry raising on a 

 city lot, or anywhere else in fact, is to be thoroughly in love with 

 your fowls and your trees. The man or woman who hates to work 

 around the hens, who grudges the time and trouble, will never 

 make a success of the work and had better let it alone. 



How to plan your back lot? It should be fenced to suit your 

 space and poultry. If it is a small yard, it may be difficult to fence 

 it high enough for the active breeds such as the Leghorns, but if 

 you use poultry netting and do not place any rail on the top, you 

 will not have any trouble with the American breeds, even with a 

 comparatively low fence. If there is no rail on the top, the fowls 

 do not see where the netting ends and they seldom try to find the 

 top, but with a rail they light on that and over they go. 



It may help a beginner to see the plan of my chicken yard on a 

 city lot. The chicken yards are 50 feet by 32 feet ; there are eight 

 fruit trees and three water faucets in the yard. The fruit trees, 

 plum, peach and fig, yielded several dollars' worth of fruit two 

 years after planting, and as they grew older, increased the value of 

 the crop in the back lot, and gave the fowls shade. 



Hen House Construction 



The earth around the trees is kept well spaded and moist, so the 

 hens enjoy it as a dust bath and that keeps them clean from lice and 

 mites. The hen house is a shed thirty-two feet long and eight feet 

 wide. It is divided in two parts for two pens of fowls. Each end 

 of it is composed of a roosting room eight feet by eight feet, with 

 space enough for forty hens, if necessary, although I never wish 

 to keep more than twenty-five in each side. 



