POULTRY HOUSES, YARDS AND RUNS. 



A PLAN OF A POULTRY HOUSE THAT WILL ACCOMMODATE PROM TWENTY TO 



THIRTY FOWLS. 



To those wishing a small hennery or duck house, for the accommodation 

 of from twenty to thirty fowls, we commend the following directions as 

 worthy of consideration : In the first place, the house should be in a 

 situation that is dry and airy, but not exposed to tempests ; the aspect 

 warm, an eastern or southeastern location is the best, sheltered, if it may 

 be, by a screen of trees or shrubbery, so that the birds may have the shelter 

 thereof from the summer midday sun, and raw, inclement winds of winter. 

 The house should also be constructed so as to give as much warmth as pos- 

 sible, with a perfect command of ventilation. The floor should be elevated 

 over the general surface, so as to be perfectly dry ; the walls close and sub- 

 stantial ; the roof air and water-tight ; windows should be placed opposite 

 each other to admit of thorough ventilation ; but one should be closed at 

 night, even in summer, to prevent through draft during sleeping hours. 

 The windows should be latticed to prevent the fowls passing out or in. The 

 roosting perches should commence at about a foot from the ground, and 

 ladder-ways, placed twelve inches or so apart, and rising twelve inches, one 

 above the other, for cocks and hens. Turkeys require eighteen inches rise, 

 and at least two feet apart. The perches to be one and a-half to two inches 

 in diameter, with the angles taken off, but not made smoothly round ; nests 

 to be constructed in the end walls. The house for twenty fowls should be 

 between five and six feet long, ten feet deep, from front to rear, seven feet 

 high at the front, and nine or ten feet high at the back. That for turkeys 

 must be seven or eight feet long, and the same depth, hight, etc., of the other 

 houses. That for ducks may be of the same dimensions as the hen house, 

 but requires no perches. A feeding coop may be made in the bottom com- 

 partment, two feet wide and two feet high, to suit the large birds ; the 

 upper one eighteen inches wide and eighteen inches high, for the smaller 

 ones ; the sides and ends to be closely boarded ; the front to be done with 

 rounded railing, in which the doors are to be made, also railed, through 

 which to take out and put in the fowls ; or the backs may have the doors in 



