AMERICAN POULTRY CULTURE 



apartments contain only enough floor space to 

 accommodate the roosts and nests and the feed 

 boxes and drinking vessels. There is little to 

 choose between the results from this plan and 

 from the ordinary continuous house plan, with the 

 front comparatively loose iand with the muslin 

 curtain. Both are invaluable in the winter time 

 in that while they have comfortable roosting quar- 

 ters, they also afford space in which the fowls may 

 enjoy healthful exercise in fresh air, without being 

 exposed to rain and snowstorms or chilling winds. 

 The author prefers the ordinary continuous type of 

 houses, such as described and illustrated in this 

 chapter, because such houses are cheaper, more 

 easily constructed and handier for the attendant 

 than those houses in which the sleeping and exer- 

 cising apartments are separate rooms. 



Colony Houses. The colony plan is adopted by 

 those who are of the opinion that fowls thrive best 

 when not housed together in excessively large num- 

 bers. Their preference Is a house which contains 

 not more than seventy-five or one hundred adult 

 birds, and it is a wise one. These houses are 

 dotted over the farm at such intervals as conven- 

 ience directs, some keeping the fowls yarded and 

 having these runs adjoining, while others place the 

 houses far enough apart to obviate the use of 

 fences, giving the flocks free range with very little 

 mingling of the members of different flocks. This 



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