232 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



country it is impracticable to allow them to roost outside, as 

 when we are ready to send them to market the number will 

 be few. A house such as I have described supplies ail the 

 favorable conditions of out-of-door roosts, and protects the 

 fowls from all their enemies. Such a building will accom- 

 modate forty chickens till the cockerels are ready for market, 

 and will protect the pullets that remain till they are ready 

 to lay. I have proved by actual experiments that chickens 

 six months old will weigh two pounds more, each, when 

 raised in such houses, than those of same age kept in tightly 

 boarded houses Avith ventilators, etc., both having same 

 feed. 



When the chickens are removed to these houses they 

 should be placed at quite a distance from and out of sigh'i 

 of their former habitation ; if this is not done, they are liable 

 to go back to their former coops. They should be moved 

 at night, and shut in the house for a day or two, when they 

 may be let out just at dusk, always feeding them near their 

 new quarters. After a day or two they will be contented, 

 and will always be found at night in their new home. If 

 they are placed near some cornfield they will do no injury 

 to the growing crop, and it will serve as a shelter for them 

 from the burning sun. As the season grows later and the 

 hay crop is gathered, these colonies may be scattered all 

 over the mowing fields to a great advantage to the next 

 season's crop. The chickens will destroy all the insects, and 

 the fertilizer that they deposit will make fields look green. 



Farmers, one thousand chickens ranging over 3^our mow- 

 ing fields from July to November, would be Avorth more to 

 you than the application of two hundred dollars' worth of 

 commercial fertilizer, and you will be receiving a profit on 

 your chickens besides. I know of a mowing lot that has 

 not been ploughed for fifteen years, but has had largo num- 

 bers of chickens ranging over it after the hay crops were 

 harvested, and the grass was so heavy on it this season that 

 much of it became lodged before it was ready to cut, and on 

 some parts of it there was harvested three tons of hay to the 

 acre. When the chickens were first allowed to run over this 

 piece of land the owner had to take a rake to get enough 

 grass together to wipe his scythe. It was a poor, run-out 



