108 POULTRY CULTURE 



the fact that this type of coop, or house, if of sufficient depth from 

 front to rear to keep the occupants protected from such storms as 

 would beat in at the front (which was often open as in the barrel 

 coop), provided the three essentials, shelter, ventilation, and, in 

 the common sizes, appropriate height. 



Poultry housed under the same roof as their owner. In the 

 British Isles the keeping of poultry in the dwelling house appears 

 to have been quite common as recently as eighty years ago and 

 possibly up to a much more recent date. In " The Poultry Yard : 

 a Practical View of the Best Method of Selecting, Rearing, and 

 Breeding the Various Species of Domestic Fowl," by Peter Boswell, 

 of Greenlaw, the author, in describing primitive methods of keep- 

 ing poultry, mentions three as specially suited to the cottager. 

 What he calls the " simplest form " is a lean-to "at the gable 

 end of the cottage, as near as possible to the opposite side of the 

 kitchen fire, at which part, and for this purpose, the wall might 

 be made thinner." As "the cottager's best" he recommends "a 

 part of the space next the roof, so often unoccupied and useless," 

 adding, " To accomplish the object, a part of it next the kitchen- 

 fire gable end should be partitioned off, floored, and fitted up with 

 baulks and laying places." When fowls were thus housed, they 

 had access to their loft by means of a hen ladder from an opening 

 through the outer wall to the ground. The third method, called 

 " the cottager's own " but recommended only to those who could 

 make no other provision for poultry, was to allow the fowls to 

 roost in "the upper part of the space at the door" at night and 

 run in the road by day. 



The custom, among the poorest class, of keeping fowls in dwell- 

 ings has a historical value, because it appears that the thriftiness 

 and productiveness of many flocks so kept are largely responsible 

 for the idea that, to lay in winter, fowls must be kept warm ; this 

 seems to have been made a fundamental principle in expert poultry- 

 house construction long before the modern period, and until a few 

 years ago was regarded as essential. 



Tight houses. The theory that winter egg production depended 

 upon high temperatures led naturally to the construction of tight 

 houses. That having been assumed, it was necessary either to heat 

 the houses artificially or to so construct them that they would 



