HOUSING OF POULTRY 179 



square feet of floor space per fowl, they are figuring on an 

 insufficient basis. A few years ago it was enough to know 

 that 8 or 10 square feet of floor space had given good re- 

 sults and half that poor results ; therefore the fowls must 

 have 8 to 10 square feet of floor space. That conclusion, 

 however, was based on the warinly built, double-boarded, 

 poorly ventilated house. Now the capacity has been in- 

 creased by putting more openings and more ventilation into 

 it, and the fowls do as well with 4 square feet of floor space 

 as they did with 10 square feet in the old houses. The rea- 



THE OREGON STATION PULLET TESTING YARDS 

 Showing portable open-front houses. 



son is that there is a more rapid exchange of air, or more 

 fresh air in the former than the latter. The capacity of the 

 house, therefore, should be measured rather on a basis of 

 purity of the air in it than by the amount of floor space. 



In the "Wye experiments it was found that in the winter 

 months with the temperature near zero a house 7% x 7 l / 2 

 feet and floor space of l 1 /^ square feet per fowl gave good 

 results when ventilated well. The carbonic acid gas varied 

 in the tests from 4.8 to 8.5 parts by volume in 10,000, the 

 latter result being on a still day. The air changed in this 

 house about four times an hour. It was concluded that 

 about 10 cubic feet of air space and 1% square feet floor 



