394 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



not giving returns to justify the expense. In central New 

 York some of the lar^e eo-tr tarniers who use S. C. White 

 Leghorns to produce eggs for the New York city market 

 keep stoves hi their houses, but I know of nowhere else 

 where it is generally done. 



When a house is kept shut close enough to keep the tem- 

 perature up by the heat from the fowls, proper ventilation 

 becomes at times impossible. Lender some conditions the 

 house cannot be kept warm with the heat from this source, 

 and at the same time the air in it renewed as often as it 

 should be. When only the nights are cold, or occasionally 

 there is a day so cool that it is thought best to keep the 

 house shut up, no serious bad results develop. But when 

 there are several days of continued cold weather, with the 

 houses shut all the time, conditions inside the houses be- 

 gin to be liad ; and if — as sometimes happens — cold and 

 stormy weather is prolonged for a week or more, conditions 

 in the poultry house become very ])ad, the walls and under 

 side of the roof drip with moisture, and the air becomes bad. 

 Under such conditions roup often develops and becomes epi- 

 demic ; or, Avhere no virulent disease appeal's, the fowls are 

 catarrhal, dcliilitated and unproductive. 



It is often said that roup and kindred diseases were rare 

 in old times, when most of the stock in the country was 

 mongrel or old barn^^ard stock, and when all the attention 

 the average poultryman gave to selection for breeding was 

 to swap roosters every year ; and many attribute the trouble 

 to in-breeding, and to a greater liability to disease in tlior- 

 oughbi'cd fowls. I think it is due more to other causes, 

 and as much to tight, badly ventilated houses as to any 

 other cause, or perhaps to all otlier causes combined, (cer- 

 tain it is that in a great many instances in the last few years 

 0})ening up the poultry houses and giving the fowls pure 

 air in abundance by night as well as by day has Ijcen fol- 

 lowed by a marked improvement in the general health of 

 the flock. 



My own ex})erimenting with cokl and opcMi houses was un- 

 dertaken to show what was possible under c-onditions quite 

 the o])posit(' of those generally recommended as necessarj'" 



