FIRST LESSONS IN POULTRY KEEPING. 121 



Some of the farmers of Rhode Island divide the floors of their poultry houses in the middle, 

 (the roosts being at one end and the door at the other) by a board set on edge. A cart load of 

 sand is put in the half next the door in the fall. At intervals through the winter a few shovel- 

 fuls of this are scattered over the droppings on the floor at the other side of the board. By 

 spring all the sand has been moved, and is mixed with the accumulation of droppings for the 

 entire winter, and the compost is carted off at the convenience of the farmer. 



In these houses the roosts occupy about half the house. In the ordinary poultry house the 

 roosts, according to number, extend two to three feet from one wall, usually the rear wall. 

 Many poultrymen put a board on edge just in front of the roosts to keep the droppings from 

 being scattered over the floor and the litter in front out of the droppings, and allow the drop- 

 pings to remain for weeks without removing. If the droppings are of normal consistency and 

 the earth of the floor or an applied absorbent takes care of the moisture in them, and if the 

 house is thoroughly ventilated, there is no objection to this. But if droppings are soft and 

 watery, or any fowls are sick, or if either for want of proper absorbents or lack of ventilation 

 the smel 1 of the droppings becomes objectionable they should be removed. To have stated times 

 for cleaning up is well, but the poultrymau should remember that his rules are made for the 

 degree of cleanliness he wishes to preserve, and that the prime thing is to preserve that degree 

 of cleanliness. He should clean as often as necessary. His rules merely represent what his 

 general practice determines is necessary. 



The board in front of the roosts may be left out and the hens allowed to scratch the litter 

 back over the droppings. This is the practice that I prefer. The droppings will not be 

 worked forward to any noticeable extent on a littered floor, for the hens scratch mostly away 

 from the light, and pile the litter up at the back of the house. The coarser litter may be 

 thrown forward with a fork, leaving finely broken stuff to mix with the droppings, and the 

 mass may lie for weeks without any odor from it being discoverable. In very steady cold 

 winters I have let the droppings lie four months. In warmer winters have found it necessary 

 to remove often, but rarely oftener than once in four or five weeks. 



If droppings boards are used they should have smooth upper surface, be wide enough to 

 receive all droppings from the fowls as they sit on the roosts, and unless they have an unusually 

 wide margin would have a strip on the front edge to keep droppings from being scattered. 

 The droppings board under a single roost should be 20 to 24 in. wide; under a double roost 

 30 to 36 in. 



The board should be 8 to 10 in. lower than the roosts. It is generally placed level. Occa- 

 sionally it is made on an incline to allow the droppings to roll off, but most poultrymen prefer 

 to clean the droppings from the level board. If droppings are soft it is necessary that boards 

 should be kept well sprinkled with some absorbent such as dry earth or sand or land plaster; 

 coal ashes and airslaked lime will answer, but the articles first mentioned are better. 



If the manure is to be sold for tanning purposes no absorbent can be used on the boards, and 

 as they quickly become saturated with the water from the droppings, the droppings boards in 

 houses from which manure is saved for tanning are often repulsive in appearance even when 

 supposed to be clean. 



Roosts. 



The roosts in a poultry house should be all together, all on the same level, and as low as may 

 be without depriving the fowls of the use of the floor space below them. The old ladder-like 

 arrangement of roosts was a bad one. The fowls would crowd for the top perches, crowd 

 each other off, and in such accidents and in jumping from the upper roosts in the morning 

 many fowls were injured. Usually one or two roosts the length of one side of the apartment 

 are all that a pen of fowls require. The Rhode Island farmers alluded to above have roosts In 

 half the house, but their fowls are expected to be out doors most of the time, the snow rarely 

 lying long there. The conditions in their houses when the hens are occasionally snow-bound 

 are not the best. 



The form of the roost is not of as much importance as many suppose. The primitive roosts 

 were round poles, and some still insist that they are better than squared roosts. Evidence to 

 support this proposition is not abundant. Wide flat roosts, three or four* Inches wide, seem to 



