62 MY POULTRY DAY BY DAY 
respond by giving you a supply of eggs all the year round. But 
do not give her artificial heat. owls do not mind dry cold if they 
are sufficiently fed. Give them a large, well-built scratching shed 
to protect them from wind and rain and they will be perfectly 
happy. ‘To accommodate 100 birds a house 16 feet by 24 feet is 
about the minimum accommodation. The house should have 
an open front, protected from storms by canvas shutters, which 
exclude the rain but not the air and light. Roof ventilation or 
small holes bored through the wood close to the roof at the back 
of the house are equally good. Mr Hanson runs 400 pullets 
together under one roof with short subdivisions of wood and wire 
to accommodate 100 in each compartment. 
I began with a house 80 feet by 16 feet, in which I kept 120 
Leghorn pullets, and another house 16 feet by 9 feet, in which J 
kept 40 Buff Orpingtons. Mr Hanson’s houses are 180 feet by 
9 feet for 400 birds, and seem to do remarkably well, but I prefer 
a house 24 feet by 12 feet for 80 to 100 birds. I think a grass 
run better than arable land. If one uses arable land it has to 
be ploughed and planted with vegetables every year to keep the 
ground sweet and clean. Alternate winter and summer runs are 
necessary if the ground is not to get foul. 
No flock of birds should be kept more than twelve months con- 
tinuously on the same land, but if the ground is allowed to rest and 
recover for the same period, it will be found perfectly healthy. 
Foul ground, which means poisonous ground, has been the 
undoing of many a poultry-farmer. He may have done well for 
one year, or where well drained, for two, or even three years, but 
invariably it only needs the lapse of time to find him out. A 
bird’s head is on the ground most of its waking moments, and 
if it is eating off a poisoned surface it will inevitably be poisoned 
too. My birds run on a large area of lucerne grass, which is an 
excellent food for them. In the winter I turn them out on the 
south side of the house and on the north side in the summer. 
I have so far suffered from no form of disease whatever. The few 
birds I have lost—less than six per cent.—have died mostly from 
ovary troubles inseparable from laying pullets. 
