AMERICAN POULTRY CULTURE 
apartments contain only enough floor space to 
accommodate the roosts and nests and the feed 
boxes and drinking vessels. There is little to 
choose between the results from this plan and 
from the ordinary continuous house plan, with the 
front comparatively loose and with the muslin 
curtain. Both are invaluable in the winter time 
in that while they have comfortable roosting quar- 
ters, they also afford space in which the fowls may 
enjoy healthful exercise in fresh air, without being 
exposed to rain and snowstorms or chilling winds. 
The author prefers the ordinary continuous type of 
houses, such as described and illustrated in this 
chapter, because such houses are cheaper, more 
easily constructed and handier for the attendant 
than those houses in which the sleeping and exer- 
cising apartments are separate rooms. 
Colony Houses. The colony plan is adopted by 
those who are of the opinion that fowls thrive best 
when not housed together in excessively large num- 
bers. Their preference is a house which contains 
not more than seventy-five or one hundred adult 
birds, and it is a wise one. These houses are 
dotted over the farm at such intervals as conven- 
ience directs, some keeping the fowls yarded and 
having these runs adjoining, while others place the 
houses far enough apart to obviate the use of 
fences, giving the flocks free range with very little 
mingling of the members of different flocks. This 
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