IN THE POULTRY YARD. 51 
View,” describes his “poultry homes” intended for 6 hens and 
1 cock, for breeding, or 12 laying hens, as being 21 feet by 3. 
This is 66 square feet to 12 hens, or 5%4 square feet to each 
bird. 
Warren Leland, a very successful poultry keeper, alows four and 
a half acres of land to each thousand birds. ‘This is at the rate 
of 196 square feet to each )ird. 
The editor of the Massachusetts Ploughman allows 6 acres of 
rocky land to each 1,000 birds. This gives 261 square feet to each 
bird. 
In former years I had kept twelve birds in good health and un- 
usual productiveness in a yard 16 -feet long and 8 feet wide which 
gave very little over 12 square feet to each bird. It is true that 
they were given the liberty of the whole garden occasionally for a 
short time, and this would of course break the monotony and enable 
them to gather insects, etc. 
Allowing 100 square feet to each bird, an acre would serve for 
435 fowls, and this seemed to me to be about the right amount to 
secure health and contentment. On this basis, I ought to be able 
to keep at least 2,000 fowls on my place—about twice the number 
that I at present thought of keeping. So much the better for 
the fowls. 
As my present accommodations were fitted for at least 125 fowls, 
about 8 times the present amount of house-room would be required, 
and this was perhaps the most serious question of all, because 
it concerned an investment which would prove an almost total 
loss if the enterprise should prove a failure. Land could be de- 
voted to other purposes, and fowls could always be sold for nearly 
what they cost, but chicken houses would be worth jusi so much 
kindling wood, and from even this value must be deducted the cost 
of chopping them up. My next step, therefore, in making my cal- 
culation was to fix upon the arrangement of my yards, and the 
number of birds in each house. 
I searched carefully the records of what others had done, chiefly 
with a view to finding out how many hens had been successfully kept 
in one house and yard, I found plenty of descriptions of houses 
