ARTIFICIAL INCUBATION 



191 



A Piano Box House — Piano boxes make very 

 cheap and useful houses for many purposes. We have- 

 used them successfully in early spring to hold a 

 brooder. There is space enough to give plenty of 

 room for the young chicks to exercise. Later the 

 brooder is taken out and the house affords ample room 

 for fifty to 100 young chicks. In winter it will hold 

 ten or twelve hens. They also make good breeding^ 

 houses in which to confine small pens of special mat- 



FIG. 79 A RHODE ISLAND COLONY-BROODER HOUSE 



ings. We wintered thirty fowls one winter in one of 

 these houses but they had the run of a large shed and 

 never did a flock lay better than this. Two boxes of 

 the same size should be procured. Remove the top 

 and backs. Set them on two poles or scantlings back 

 to back and about twenty-two inches apart which is- 

 the width at the top. Put down one top to fill out the 

 floor and use the other to close up one space between 

 the ends. Take the backs to pieces and rip one board' 



