146 POULTRY BREEDING AND MANAGEMENT 



farms for storing feed. The different colonies are so 

 widely separated that the grass is never eaten off the fields. 

 The laying house is placed between the two roosting houses 

 and is usually smaller than the roosting house. There is 

 nothing in the roosting house except the perches, the whole 

 space being used for roosting. With 100 hens in a house 

 the roosting space per hen is about one square foot floor 

 space. This, of course, is crowding them to the limit and 



PETALUMA FARM OF 120 ACRES AND 6,000 HENS 



A boy on horseback feeds the hens wheat in half an hour. Wm. Reardon, 



owner. 



it is not the universal practice. In any less favorable 

 climate it would not be advisable to do business on this 

 basis, and even here it is very questionable whether better 

 financial results would not be obtained if not more than 

 75 hens were kept in the house. 



As to the system of feeding, the practice is to heavily 

 feed a wet mash in the morning, with wheat in the after- 

 noon. The feed troughs are fenced in if cattle or sheep 

 are in the same field. 



The White Leghorn breed is almost exclusively kept. 

 Larger and less active breeds would not be suited in some 

 particulars to the methods followed. It may not seem 

 reasonable to say that a man with 5,000 hens on a farm 



