PO UL TR r- CRAFT. 



39 



33. Continuous, or Sectional Poultry Houses. Intensive poultry 

 keeping, many fowls on a small plot of ground, is the practice of most 

 progressive poultrymen. The colony plan reproduces as many times as 

 desired the conditions of the ordinary farm flock. A system of continuous or 

 sectional houses multiplies as often as desired the conditions of the best kept 

 flocks. The colony plan allows but eighty to one hundred hens to the acre. 

 The continuous house system with suitable yards, allows four hundred to 

 five hundred hens to the acre. The failures of the first attempts at intensive 

 poultry keeping were due to the failures of the poultrymen to provide meat 

 food, vegetable food, grit, exercise. With these errors corrected, results 

 soon showed the superiority of the intensive system for those who make 

 poultry keeping a business. The fact that it is the system almost universally 

 adopted, makes superfluous a recital of its advantages further than intimated 

 in describing the colony plan, and to be mentioned in the description of 

 different styles of continuous houses. 



34. Continuous House with Connecting Pens. In a short house, 

 or one containing a few long compartments, passage through the house is 



Fig. 8. Cheap Four Pen House. 

 Dotted lines in the perspective indicate 

 positions of studs and rafters; in the 

 ground plan, positions of roosts. 



usually from pen to pen. 

 Fig. 8 illustrates such 

 a house, containing four 

 pens each 12 ft. square. It is a substantial, low cost house, the construction 

 being the simplest consistent with strength and durability. It is built without 

 sills or plates. The studs are spiked to short cedar posts, placed 4 ft. apart, 

 set 1 8 in. into the ground, and projecting the same distance above ground ; or 

 the studs are used as posts, the end which goes into the ground having been 

 coated with tar. The lower ends of the rafters rest upon the tops of these 

 stud-posts; the upper ends are joined directly, being secured with spikes 



driven through each into the other, and all rafters 

 except those at the ends being braced as shown in 

 Fig. 9. The dotted lines in the drawing indicate 

 the positions of studs and rafters. Each window 

 Flg ' 9 * opening adjoins a stud on one side ; on the other 



side a short stud, simply nailed to the sheathing, is placed. This short stud 

 extends 6 to 8 in. above the upper edge, and a like distance below the lower 



