IN THE POULTRY YARD. 71 
roll and scratch ; but although this might serve very well for fifty 
hens, it was but a meagre allowance for five hundred, not to speak 
of a thousand, or, as I hoped to have at times, 3,000. I therefore 
saw that each yard must have its own shelter and its own sheds. 
The glass-covered shed served on very cold days for a dusting 
place, and a sort of warm room, but it was not large enough to ac- 
commodate 75 fowls. I therefore felt that a plain shed, open to 
the south, and enclosed on at least the rear and one side, would be 
almost a necessity, and so I put up one that was 10 feet long and 
8 feet wide. The height at the back was 2 feet and at the front 
6 feet. During the summer, when the sun was nearly vertical, this 
afforded a nice cool shade at noonday; and in winter, when the 
sun was low, even at noontide, his rays lighted up every part and 
made it warm and dry. On wet days the hens used these sheds 
very freely, and so much comfort did they seem to take in them 
that I put up two for every house. These, with the glass shed, 
gave nearly four square feet of shelter for every bird, and to this I 
attributed a large part of my success. 
After the house was finished, the next thing was to surround it 
with a proper fence, stock it with hens, and test its working. ‘This 
I did, and I could find no point in which the house itself could be 
improved without greatly increasing the cost. Of course I could 
not, at this season, test it for cold weather, but I had no misgiving 
on that point. I had successfully kept fowls during severe winters 
in worse houses than this. 
The only point in regard to which I did not fully test it was in 
regard to the number it would hold. The market price of hens 
was rather higher than I thought they were worth. I therefore 
contented myself with thirty birds, which I purchased in ‘the mar- 
ket and transferred to this yard. After ten days I gave them their 
liberty, and although they roamed all over the place during the 
day, and mixed with the old stock freely, yet they always returned 
to their own yard at night, and I believe very few of them laid 
away. One or two hens stole nests in the shrubbery, and as there 
was no rooster amongst them the eggs proved worthless, so that 
