84 COMMON SENSE 
Preparing for a Start. 
wea] UL this preliminary work had merely been for the purpose 
M| of educating myself in the best mode of managing and 
handling chickens in flocks which might be multiplied to 
any extent. I was perfectly satisfied with my house, hatching 
nests and brooding coops; it only remained to arrange the places 
for the houses, put them up, procure the hens and go to work. 
First of all, then, about the location of the houses. If I had 
studied neatness and order, I would probably have placed them 
in a symmetrical row, so that they might look as if some person of 
“refined taste” had had the ordering of them, and many a scolding 
I got from my wife for the hap-hazard way in which I: scattered 
them over the ground. But to have arranged them in a row 
would have rendered impossible one of the ma‘n objects I wished 
to attain, viz., the possession by the fowls of a sense of ownership 
of a distinct home. By placing a house in a corner by itself, put- 
ting a fence around it and confining its quota of fowls to this yard 
for a few weeks, I felt that I could easily “domicile” each flock 
by itself. After this, so great was my faith in the desire of the 
fowls to keep to one roosting place, and in their power to find 
their way back to it, no matter how far they might stray, that I 
had no hesitation in allowing them their freedom over the entire 
place. Of course it was necessary to prevent their trespassing on 
‘the property of others, and in order to insure this, I proposed to 
fence in those portions of the grounds that were not naturally pro- 
tected. Thus, on the north the ground was left open, because there 
was nothing but barren rocks above me on that side. On the east” 
there was a piece of woods in which they could do no possible 
damage, but rather good by destroying insects. The owner was 
an absentee, and the land lay in commons, so I had _ no hesitation 
about letting the hens go there occasionally, as it was impossible 
for them to do any actual damage. 
