102 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



are but three kinds, after all, and in tlicir treatment the last 

 should be made the first. 



The makeshift poultry house is one that shonld be utilized 

 by poultry-men as far as jDossible. We believe that on nearly 

 every farm where there is a set of buildings of long standing 

 there are almost invariably one or more places now wholly 

 unused, which may be easily prepared and adapted to the 

 needs of a flock of fowls. A farmer once came to me, saying : 

 "Come iTj) and buy my hens; they will not lay, and I'm 

 going to sell them, and not keep any until I build a good 

 poultry house." I went, and found a flock of splendid pid- 

 lets, all as fat as could be, with six or seven bushels of un- 

 shelled corn under their feet, and as many more of partly 

 shelled corn. 'No wonder that those pullets did not lay ! But 

 what surprised me was that they were living in a big, dry, 

 warm barn basement, wholly unused for other purposes, and 

 of such a nature that the insertion of a few south windows 

 would have made it as good a house for one hundred hens as 

 I ever saw, and this with no other expense. When we bought 

 our place there stood on the lawn a two-story building which 

 was erected fifty years ago for silk culture. Sills decayed, 

 roof leaky, sides and floors bad, — it looked like a case for the 

 bonfire; but with two small boys to help, and no carpenter, 

 we moved, resilled, roofed, floored, shingled the sides, and 

 painted it, until it was something like the " old family vinegar 

 barrel, that had been in the house two hundred years." The 

 owner admitted the new hoops, heads and staves, but declared 

 that it had the " same old bung-hole." So our old building 

 we made into a wagon and tool house, a storage and a rat- 

 proof feed room; but up stairs was an 18 by 30 foot space 

 unused. This we floored double, and, by putting in a stair- 

 way and a hall on the first floor, with a front outside door 

 facing south, opening into a half-acre hen pasture, we have 

 made it for five years the home of one hundred hens. So we 

 would say to every farmer, don't build until you use what 

 you have ; basement, ground floor or attic, it is all the same 

 to " Biddy," if you give her light, dryness, freedom from 

 drafts and plenty of space. 



