The Hen's House. 



53 



Fig. 26. 



SCRATCHING SHED 



ARRANGEMENT. 



in hot days, as well as the large door in east 

 end (which is left off to show interior) and 

 which opens into an open front scratching shed 

 size of the house. The low windows let -the 

 Winter sun shine on the earth floor, drying and 

 warming it, so the fowls make a dust bath of 

 the entire floor. Roost platform, with remov- 

 able roosts, nest boxes and feed trough, are 

 shown; on the east end next the door is a box with three partitions, one 

 each for shells, grit and charcoal." 



Fig. 26 shows a plan for connecting the house with a scratching shed. 

 Fig. 27 shows how a boy with a small backyard kept a few hens in a 

 piano box, while Fig. 29 shows a henhouse on wheels, often used in 

 England for pasturing the hens on a grain stubble. This house or wagoii 

 is hauled about the field after harvest, and the hens pick up the grain that 

 was lost by the reapers. 



WARMING THE HENHOUSE.— Some experiments have been made 

 in providing artificial heat. In Maine a house 150 feet long was well built, 

 yet cold in the worst of Winter. A hot-water heater was placed in a 

 pit at one end, and from it a line of two-inch pipes was carried the entire 

 length of the building and returned under the roosts. This gave suffi- 

 cient heat, kept the hens in good health, and the egg yield was main- 

 tained. Stoves have been used in some houses, but not with the best oi 

 success. A device for using a lamp in a small house is shown in Fig. 28. 

 On a large scale, and in very cold weather, the hot-water pipe might pay, 

 but the danger is in using the heat in milder weather — when the hens 

 would be better off without it. Some poultry keepers follow the plan that 

 has proved so successful with cattle; building a tight, warm building, pro- 

 viding for a good ventilation, and leaving the question of warmth to the 

 animal heat of the hens. H. E. Cook has described what he calls a "hen 

 sanitarium." This was a room 10 x 24 feet. In this room 125 hens were 

 kept, and though outside the mercury fell to far below zero, the temperature 

 inside ranged from 37 degrees to 42 degrees. Mr. Cook says : 



"This house is thoroughly insulated upon all sides but one, which is 

 protected by another building, by a stuffed 

 wall of straw and straw above, and a ce- 

 ment floor, thus shutting off every chance 

 for air to enter around the wall or for cold 

 air contact or moisture from the soil below. 

 I have repeatedly said that it does not seem 

 possible to secure large egg production in 



the Winter in our northern sections, where ^ ._,_ 



it storms often three days in a week and PIANO-BOX HOUSE. 



