

CHAPTER IX. 



The Tolman House 



HE TOLMAiST Fresh-Air House was invented and 

 promoted by Joseph Tolman, of Eockland, Mass- 

 one of the leading pioneers in the development or 

 open-front poultry houses. This house has a double 

 pitch roof with the long slope of roof to the south 

 and the highest point of the roof directly in front 

 of the roosts. It has an entirely open front. The usual dimen- 

 sions for Tolman houses are, sill measurement : 8 feet wide by 14 

 feet deep; 10x16 feet, and 14x24 feet. Height at rear, 5 feet from 

 sill, at peak 8 feet from sill, in front 3% feet from sill, for the 

 smaller houses. The large house has proportionately higher stud. 

 The Tolman house is an excellent house and I used two of them 

 for several years in Middleton, Mass., with satisfactory results. 

 Mr. Tolman's own story as told in March, 1911, American Poultry 

 Journal, is interesting; here it is as told by himself: 

 Fresh-Ail' Poultry Housing, hy Joseph Tolman 



"The first eight years of my work in the poultry business was 

 with the closed type of poultry house, and I met with very poor 

 results. Then it was no uncommon thing for me to take hatch 

 after hatch out of my incubators, place the chicks in the brooder 

 and, in less than three weeks, carry them out again in pails and 

 bags, losing practically the whole hatch, for those that lived would 

 be very poor specimens. Perhaps these poor results cannot be 

 wholly attributed to the manner of housing, yet, from results I 

 have obtained since using my fresh-air houses, I am convinced that 

 most of the trouble was due to close housing of my breeding stock. 

 "When we stop to think of the closed houses, poorlv ventilated 

 and full of stale, foul air, that the maioritv of poultrvmen used 

 for poultry a dozen years ago, we should not be surprised at the 

 frequency with which diseases like roup, diphtheria, tuberculosis, 

 cholera, etc., developed in closed-house flocks. Tt is a fact that 

 breeding fowls have been so weakened in vitality and disease- 

 resisting power throua-b lack of fresh air, particularly at night, that 

 it has been almost impossible to raise their chicks. 



"My first open-front or fresh-air houses were used during the 

 severe cold winter of 1904 and 1905, and remarkably good results 



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