SYSTEMS OF POULTRY KEEPING 85 



from 80 to 1 20 square feet, and is given a yard of only two or 

 three times the area of the house floor. Under such conditions 

 poultry can be kept healthy and made productive only by the most 

 careful management, including regular provision for exercise and 

 the variety of vegetable and animal foods that they get when 

 foraging on a good range. If carefully managed, small flocks so 

 kept will usually show a better profit per hen and better returns 

 for the area of ground that they occupy than flocks kept on range. 

 Larger flocks under the same conditions do not, as a rule, give 

 returns proportionate to those from the small flocks. Hence it was 

 natural for the town poultry keeper, instead of adding to the original 



FIG. 88. Typical breeding-stock house (intensive plan). The yards here are 

 only 50 feet long, though available land is practically unlimited 



flock when increasing his stock, to multiply his flocks, just as the 

 Rhode Island farmer did, and thus to develop the intensive system. 

 Intensive systems. When the small flock in close quarters is 

 made the unit, and the conditions duplicated indefinitely, an inten- 

 sive system is developed. By such a system the apparent poultry 

 capacity of any given area is very large. Four or five hundred hens 

 to the acre the advocate of intensive methods did not consider 

 crowding, and some systems were calculated for double those 

 numbers. The difference between a system providing for four or 

 five hundred hens to the acre and one providing for eight hundred 

 or a thousand was principally in the allowance of yard room. The 

 smaller numbers might be given yards large enough for a part of 

 the yard to keep in grass under favorable conditions ; the larger 



