FIRST LESSONS IN POULTRY KEEPING. 



61 



(c). Two (OR MORE) PEN HOUSES WITH WALKS EXTENDING THE LENGTH OF THE 



HOUSE, AND ACCESS TO EACH PEN SEPARATELY FROM THE WALK. 

 This is the most common arrangement where more than a few email flocks are 

 kept in the same building. 

 Position of the Walk. 



In a house facing south with one row of pens, it is customary to put the walk 

 along the back or north side, but occasionally the walk is put in front. This latter 

 arrangement seems to me to have little to recommend it, and in many hundreds of 

 houses that I have in- 



spected, I have seen 

 not more than two or 

 three with walk in 

 front. 



In a house with two 

 rows of pens, the walk 

 must be in the middle. 

 Such a house may face 

 south. In that case, 

 the south pens in front 

 of the walk should 

 have low roof pitched 



to the south, the north Semi-Monitor Top Roof. 



pens a high roof pitched to the north, as shown in the accompanying cut. Or the 

 pens may face east and west, the length of the building running north and south, 

 and the walk in the middle the entire length of the building. 



I don't think the walk in the middle is ever found very satisfactory, except in 

 comparatively short houses. The east and west front does not work well where 

 winters are severe, but where winters are mild and summers oppressively warm, its 

 faults are not serious in winter, while, as a summer house, it is superior. 



2. As to Construction of House With Reference to Methods of 



Handling Fowls. 



(a). ORDINARY CLOSED HOUSES-. 



That is, houses with doors and windows arranged with reference only to ingress and 



egress, and to light. 

 (b). OPEN FRONT SCRATCHING SHED HOUSES. 



In this type of house each house, or each section in a series of pens, consists of two 



compartments, a closed roosting room, and, connecting with it, a scratching shed 



with open front. 



(c). SCRATCHING ROOM HOUSES. 



This type of house is intermediate between the other two, and is by all odds the best type 

 devised to date. It differs from the ordinary closed house in having doors and windows 

 designed to give it when open all the advantages of the open front scratching shed, while 

 when closed in bad weather they make it a close house and more suitable to such condi- 

 tions than the open front shed. It has the additional advantage of giving greater capa- 

 city than the double compartment scratching shed plan. In that plan poultrymen found 

 in practice that the capacity of a section was no greater than the capacity of the scratch- 

 ing shed, in which the hens passed most of their time. The most common dimensions in 

 such houses have been 10 x 18 ft. sections divided into roosting room 8 x 10 ft., -and 

 scratching shed 10 x 10 ft. By removing the partition and throwing the two compart- 

 ments into one the capacity became the capacity of the floor of the entire section. 

 Why "Scratching" Shed and Room? Most readers whose interest in poultry culture dates 

 not more than a few years back will have some curiosity to know how the term "scratching" 

 has come to be given so much emphasis in connection with housing systems. The object of the 

 open front scratching shed was to make a special place for fowls to take air and exercise 



