3 8 Profitable Poultry Keeping. 



easy to work with, and may be made capablo of removal 

 without much damage, if removal is necessary, there is no 

 objection whatever to it, if sufficiently thick timber is 

 used throughout, and the whole well and strongly put 

 together. 



The question of size is one that must of necessity be ruled 

 by the inclinations of the owner. We do not mean the 

 number of fowls he intends to keep, so much as whether 

 he prefers to have only one house, or several scattered 

 about. We must confess to having a preference for the 

 latter plan, where there is sufficient room to allow of it, 

 but at the same time there are doubtless advantages in 

 having the birds all in one house, not the least of which 

 is that they can be easily seen and are less liable to be 

 stolen. Then it is also cheaper to build one house for 

 two hundred birds than four houses to hold fifty each, 

 and even where the question of cost is not regarded so 

 closely, a much more pleasing structure can be erected than 

 if divided into a number of small ones. Perhaps the best 

 plan is that indicated by us in the previous chapter, namely, 

 to combine both these systems, and to have the breeding, 

 and chicken houses near at home, and the others more 

 widely scattered about. However, these are arrangements 

 which can be safely left to be decided individually, and 

 our instructions as to building poultry houses will apply 

 to small and to large houses equally. A house twelve feet 

 long by six feet wide, and seven or eight feet from the floor 

 to the eaves, will be large enough to accommodate fifty- 

 fowls, and we should not recommend that it be made larger 

 than this. Too small a house is dangerous, as the vitiation 

 of the atmosphere which naturally results breeds disease, 

 but on the other hand too large a house is equally an evil, 

 as the birds are exposed to a very large amount of cold 

 air during the winter, ' which absorbs the heat from their 



