AMERICAN POULTRY CULTURE 
fowl. With small flocks of ten to fifteen birds 
this is more essential than where fifty head or 
How Much more are kept together in one flock. 
House Room Also, breeding fowls need more house 
Per Fowl room for fertile eggs than hens that are 
kept merely to produce a large number of eggs 
regardless of the hatching quality. More fowls 
can profitably be accommodated in a house of a cer- 
tain size during the summer time than during the 
winter. For all-the-year-around work, a house 
rox1o feet should contain no more than nine or ten 
breeding hens and a rooster. Hens kept for eggs 
alone, and with no male birds in the flock, can 
safely be housed in flocks of forty or more at the 
rate of five square feet of floor space to each 
fowl. 
How often a house should be cleaned out de- 
pends very largely upon the number of fowls in 
Keeping the the house; a house that is crowded 
House Clean certainly needs cleaning more fre- 
quently than a house in which the fowls have 
plenty of room. Also, in damp weather the 
droppings have a very strong odor and should. 
not be allowed to accumulate. On the best-man- 
aged poultry plants, and where the birds have all 
the house room desirable, the droppings are re- 
moved every day. Use droppings boards under the 
perches, keep them sprinkled with fine dry dirt, 
sand, sawdust, leaves or other litter, and it is not 
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