IOO 



OUR DOMESTIC BIRDS 



LARGE STOCKS ON GENERAL FARMS 



When farmers in America began to keep larger stocks of 

 fowls, the most common practice nearly everywhere was to in- 

 crease the general flock until there were far too many fowls on 

 the land that they would usually forage over. Under such con- 

 ditions fowls on the farm were not profitable. They damaged 

 every crop to which they had access, and made the farm most 

 unsightly in the vicinity of the dwelling house. Then some 

 farmers would reduce the flock and return to the old practice of 



keeping only a few dozen hens, 

 while others would adopt the 

 city plan of building houses with 

 many compartments and keep- 

 ing the fowls yarded in small 

 flocks. This plan was usually 

 abandoned within a few years, be- 

 cause, while it worked very well 

 in the winter, when the farmer 

 had time to give the hens extra 

 care, they were not as well off 

 in the summer, when the farmer 



FIG. 98. Stone poultry house about 



two hundred years old, on farm of 



F. W. C. Almy, Tiverton Four 



Corners, Rhode Island 



had to give attention to his field crops first. Such was the usual 

 course of development of farm methods of managing fowls. 



The colony system. But occasionally a farmer whose flock 

 had outgrown its accommodations as one flock would divide it, 

 moving a part to another place on the farm, and so was able to 

 maintain the increase in numbers without adopting laborious 

 methods. This idea was carried out most systematically and 

 most extensively in the vicinity of Little Compton, Rhode 

 Island, where the Rhode Island Red fowl originated. The first 

 settlers in this part of Rhode Island built large stone poultry 

 houses like that shown in Fig. 98. Some of these old build- 

 ings are still used for poultry. This district is most favorably 



