No. 4.] POULTRY HOUSING. 391 



PRACTICAL POULTRY HOUSING. 



BY JOHN IT. ROBINSON. EDIT* ►li OF " FAllM-rorLTUV, " BOSTON, MASS. 



At several of the farmers' institutes in this State which it 

 has been my privilege to address during the past year, the 

 description of some poultry houses I am using and explana- 

 tion of reasons for using; them has excited enouo-h interest to 

 make me think farmers throughout the State may be equally 

 interested in that subject. 



The ideas and principles upon which this method of hous- 

 ing poultry is based are not new, nor are they at all novel. 

 On the contrary, they are very old and very common. The 

 noteworthy thing among them is that they have not until 

 within a few years seemed to those looking for the best Avays 

 of housing poultry to be worth serious consideration. For 

 several ja^ars now they have been much discussed in the 

 poultr}^ press, and the general interest in them and increas- 

 ing tendency to use them marks what is probably the last 

 stage in the reaction from the plans and methods most in 

 favor since the interest in better results from poultry culture 

 l)egan to assume its present importance. 



For a great many years authorities on poultry keeping 

 have advocated warm, tightly built poultry houses. The}^ 

 have held that, inasmuch as hens naturally laid best during 

 the spring, the essential thing (if one wanted to get eggs in 

 winter) was to reproduce spring conditions, especially tem- 

 perature. So, with double and triple walls, with dead air 

 spaces, with double sash on the windows, with large windows 

 to admit as much sunlight as possible by day and with roost- 

 ing rooms and closets to shut the fowls up close and keep 

 them warm in at night, they have tried to approximate spring 

 conditions. In a degree they have succeeded, as far as 

 temperature is concerned, — that is to say, they have sue- 



