POULTRY-HOUSE FITTINGS 159 



droppings voided while the fowls are at roost fall on it. It is some- 

 times built into the house and sometimes rests on strips nailed to 

 the wall at each end ; more rarely the droppings board, with roosts 

 attached, rests on legs like a bench or table. The platform is 

 raised far enough above the floor to let the fowls get under it. 

 The space between the platform and the roosts is about eight or 

 ten inches. At one time the droppings board was considered in- 

 dispensable in a properly kept poultry house. It was not used by 

 the farmers who developed the colony system in Rhode Island, 

 and it was rarely used, as intended, by commercial poultry keepers 

 whose business was on a paying basis. Unless it is kept clean by 

 removal of the droppings every two or three days, conditions in 

 the poultry house are likely to be much better without it. On the 

 whole, only about half the droppings are kept off the floor by its 

 use. When kept clean, droppings boards add enormously to the 

 work of caring for poultry, 1 without contributing any measurable 

 benefit. 



Roosting closets. As the roosts are usually placed, the space 

 that they occupy may be partitioned from the rest of the room 

 with very little expense. If they extend along one side, from wall 

 to wall, a partition of boards brought part way down, with a drop 

 curtain the rest of the way when desired, gives the same condi- 

 tions as if the fowls were in a house similarly arranged and shel- 

 tered. When droppings boards are used, the roosting space, if 

 inclosed, gives relatively more crowded conditions. If the roosts 

 extend but part of the length of a side of the house, a roosting 

 closet may be made by boarding up one or both ends of the 

 roosting space and making the front of boards, or boards and 

 curtain. This closet arrangement may be a decided advantage for 

 a few birds kept in a large room, or for tender birds, or in extreme 

 cold weather. It should, however, be used with care. Except in 

 extreme cold snaps, hardy fowls in a well-stocked house will usually 



1 One winter, before littering the floors of the open houses that I use, I took 

 the droppings from the floors under the roosts for a number of days, to get the 

 average time required to remove the droppings daily. Then the floors were littered 

 with leaves, and the droppings were removed from the floor under the roosts only 

 when they gave an odor, three times in the course of the winter. The actual 

 time taken was three hours and a half ; the time required to remove the drop- 

 pings daily for the same period was thirty-four hours. 



