HOUSING OF POULTRY 161 



If the business of egg production is harder or requires 

 greater skill than the business of butter production, it is 

 because of this one fact the extreme sensitiveness of the 

 hen to her environment. This lesson should be thoroughly 

 remembered in embarking in the poultry business and 

 especially in planning the poultry houses and yards. 



Changes and Progress. Probably in no other branch of 

 poultry husbandry have ideas and methods changed more 

 radically during the past ten years than in that relating 

 to housing of poultry, and we are bound to say that the 

 changes have been along the line of progress. There are 

 still problems in poultry housing but they are being 

 worked out surely. At the end of the last century dense 

 ignorance of simple, elementary principles of housing might 

 well characterize the state of knowledge on this subject. 

 Not that there were not some isolated examples of proper 

 housing ; there were. But there was no general agreement 

 among authorities as to what constituted some of the 

 essential principles of housing. There were fierce conten- 

 tions on the subject but lacking actual demonstration the 

 contenders got nowhere. The change of methods has 

 amounted to a revolution. No one agency has been re- 

 sponsible for this change, but probably without the demon- 

 strations made at experiment stations there would not 

 have been the progress that has been witnessed. The lesson 

 has also been learned and taught by costly experience and 

 experiment of practical poultry-keepers. Professor Gowell 's 

 work at the Maine Station deserves strong commendation. 

 Not that he discovered any new thing in poultry housing 

 but he put conflicting ideas to test and by actual demon- 

 stration brought poultry-keepers face to face with the 

 problem. 



Notwithstanding the great progress that has been made 

 since the beginning of the century, the last word has not 



