Importance of a Turf Run. 65 



eye of the attendant. A quarter of an acre will be sufficient 

 upon which to rear a couple of hundred chickens ; and, 

 perhaps, if more than this number is to be hatched, it will be 

 well to divide both the house and run, giving a quarter of an 

 acre for every two hundred birds. We do not mean that two 

 hundred chicks with their mothers can be kept on this 

 amount of ground at one time, for that would be crowding 

 with a vengeance ; but, as the older ones are deserted by the 

 hens, they will be drafted off into other houses, and younges 

 ones be coming on ; so that probably there will be seldom 

 more than fifty to eighty upon the ground at one time, and 

 this only during four or five months of the year. One-fourth 

 of the ground — that immediately in front of the house — 

 should be laid in gravel, and the rest be in grass. The nicer 

 and smoother the latter is, the better for the birds ; and upon 

 no account must the grass be allowed to grow very long, or 

 the chicks, in wandering about it, will get at times damp and 

 wet, and the result be disease among them. Many ladies 

 who keep fowls upon a fairly large scale, place the coops out 

 upon their lawns during the spring, and as the grass is kept 

 short, the ground, generally drained, and in a sunny place, 

 the chickens thrive well. No harm, but a considerable 

 amount of good, is done to the grass, as the manure enriches 

 it very much. We know poultry yards, where the grass in 

 the chicken-yard is as carefully cut and rolled, as a lawn 

 can be ; but this is where feather-footed exhibition birds 

 are kept. 



The house itself will best take the form of a long and 

 rather narrow shed. It need not be more than eigbt or ten 

 feet wide, and any additional ground space had better be 

 put into the length than the breadth, as there is in this way 

 a larger frontage for the sun to play upon. Where it can 

 be done, we prefer the slope of the roof to be to the back ; 

 the chief objection to this being, that if the back wall of the 



