COUNTRY MANSIONS. 361 



feeding sheep and cattle, and with similar success. Having thus noticed the 

 requisites common to all poultry-houses, a very few words will suffice to state 

 what is peculiar to each. 



440. The hen-house, as generally lodging the most numerous and useful 

 class of poultry in a yard, requires to be the largest. The roosting-house 

 should contain, at least, a square foot of area for every fowl that is to roost in 

 it; this average allowing rather more than a square foot for fullgrown fowls, 

 and less for chickens. The perches for roosting on may either form a slope 

 from within 3 ft. of the ground, to within the same distance of the ceiling; or 

 they may form a floor 4 ft. below the ceiling ; the perches being placed across 

 the house, and about 18 in. apart. The form of these perches ought to be 

 square or angular in the section ; for gallinaceous fowls cannot bend their 

 toes so as to grasp a round perch. The entrance for the fowls should be on a 

 level with the roosting-floor, from which the ascent and descent on the outside 

 may be by a ladder formed by nailing fillets of wood at regular distances across 

 a board, to serve as steps; or, which is more architectural, by neat brick or 

 stone steps, projected from the wall. In the inside, there may be a portable 

 wooden ladder, to enable any chickens which may have fallen from the roost 

 during the night to get up again in the morning, so as to go out with the 

 other fowls, at the opening at, the top of the outside stair. There ought to be 

 a shutter to this opening, which should be carefully closed every night, after 

 the fowls have gone to roost, in order to exclude vermin. The great advan- 

 tages of having the perches all on one level, on what is called a roosting-floor, 

 instead of having tliem sloping like the stage of a green-house, are, that the 

 whole of the fowls roost in the upper, and consequently warmest, part of the 

 house ; that there is no scrambling among the stronger fowls to get to the 

 highest perch, in consequence of which the weaker ones are often thrown 

 down and hurt; and that there is no temptation to the stronger fowls to fly 

 up to their perches at night, or fly down in the morning, which always deranges 

 the weaker ones that are obliged to go up and down to their perches by the 

 ladder. The shutter to the opening at the top of the outside ladder should 

 be opened every morning at sunrise ; or, when the sun rises earlier than five 

 or six o'clock, at whatever hour the workmen are accustomed to go to work, 

 in order that the fowls may get out to pickup snails, worms, and insects, while 

 the dew is on the grass, and before these vermin have returned to their holes 

 in the soil. Afterwards, the large door and all the windows of the roosting- 

 house should be opened, and left in that state till towards the time when the 

 fowls usually go to roost. The floor, in the mean time, should have been care- 

 fully washed out, so that, on the return of the fowls, they may find their 

 roosting-house perfectly clean and sweet in every part. 



441. The laying and sitting-house for the common fowls may be of the same 

 dimensions as the roosting-house; but, instead of being furnished with a 

 framework of perches near the ceiling, there should be a number of boxes 

 about 18 inches square, each with a little doorway cut in it in front, for the hen 

 to enter and come out. A row of these boxes should be ranged along the side 

 and back walls on the floor, for sitting-boxes ; above these, if many fowls are 

 kept, may be another row of boxes for laying in, with similar doorways, and a 

 ledge along them in front, broad enough to allow the hens to walk along it, 

 and which may be ascended to by a ladder (like that of the roosting-house) at 

 each end. When the hens seem inclined to sit, the requisite number of eggs 



