housing and yarding to discover. After many years of detailed results, 

 the best percentage of eggs from a practical number of hens was had, 

 in flocks of twenty in open front 8 by 8 pens, with three-foot projection 

 over open front to keep out rain. Less than twenty hens in one open 

 pen requires more detail and too much cost in housing. More than 

 twenty hens curtails egg production. 



Twenty hens, therefore, is the unit for best results. To house 

 these twenty hens so that they would be free from dust-laden air, so 

 that they would have air as pure as outside air, so that they would 

 still be protected from rains, and winds, and cold drafts; in short, so 

 that their bodily comfort would be the best possible at all times, to 

 house these hens so that all these points would be taken care of is the 

 problem. After trying all the designs of houses ever seen or read of, 

 and after trying many patterns of my own, I at last evolved a house 

 that gives all this bodily comfort and entails the least lost motion in 

 care of fowls. 



These pens are eight feet square, five feet high behind, and seven 

 and one-half feet high at the comb, open front to the east, over which 

 is a three-foot projection to keep out rain and under which the attend- 

 ant walks to care for fowls. These pens are built side by side into long 

 houses, there being no limit to the length. Between each two pens is 

 the feed hopper built into the partition and feeding both sides, holding 

 one sack of dry mash and one of mixed grains in its respective com- 

 partments. Full length along the outside is the green feed trough, 

 from which the hens eat through the opening. The water buckets are 

 also on the outside. Thus all the hens are fed greens and watered 

 without opening a single gate or door. The hoppers inside are filled 

 once in about two weeks. The dropping boards and ground floor are 

 cleaned once per week by simply raking the filth from the top of the 

 sand which covers the floors. Sand is the only material to use on the 

 floors of poultry houses. 



Twenty hens, well-bred, well-fed, and quarters kept sanitary in 

 this little pen, are good for at least $2.00 each per year net profit above 

 feed expense. These twenty hens have clean, sharp sand upon the 

 ground floor and roosting boards, which is raked clean regularly. 

 They have dry mash and mixed grain by them continually; they can 

 stick their heads through to the green feed trough outside and eat 

 green feed every hour during the day; they drink water from clean 

 galvanized buckets on the outside; they dust in the sand; they jump 

 up to the feed hopper; they jump down again to the green feed trough ; 

 they run to the water; they hop up to the nest boxes (which, by the 

 way, is the most important move of the day), and after depositing 

 their board bill and rent, plus the extra profit, they jump down and up 

 again to the perches for an afternoon rest, or stretch out into the 

 afternoon sunshine, which comes in through the western window. 

 Their whole day is given up to their own individual care, and with all 

 the necessaries before them, all the time is available for making eggs, 

 and with their morning sun bath, and afternoon sun bath and free 

 from draft or foul, dusty air, with all these ideal conditions, they have 

 either got to "lay or bust." 



One acre of good fertile soil with plenty of cheap water for irrigation 

 is all that any one family can handle without hiring help. This is one 



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