LARGE FLOCKS v. SMALL FLOCKS 181 
take the smaller figure, 166 houses at £4 each amounts to £664, 
To make the same number of pens would cost; at £1 per pen— 
and it could not be done at that figure—another £166; total for 
houses and pens, £830, or £570 more than when housing in flocks 
of 250 each. The upkeep, repairs, etc., of the smaller houses 
would be correspondingly more expensive, with the 166 doors and 
locks to the houses and 166 gates to the pens, instead of 4 doors 
and 4 gates. Similarly with the never-ending adjustments of 
windows—4 large to 166 small would be a trifle. So much 
for the initial capital cost, which would run into £20 per annum 
in favour of the larger houses. 
But it is not so much the question of cost of buildings, etc., as 
the cost of labour that tells when poultry-farming on a large scale. 
One could not place 166 small houses and pens on less than ten 
acres of ground, while one could easily put the four larger houses 
on three or four acres. A large house has the additional advantage 
of allowing all the work to be done under cover and the birds all 
fed in the dry, no matter what the state of the weather outside. 
With small houses this is impossible. But to return to the 
question of labour. How long would it take merely to open 
and shut 166 doors, say, four times per day ? How long would it 
take a skilled man to feed the birds in 166 houses twice a day ? 
Not less than three minutes per house with a walk of another 
minute to the next house, that is eight minutes per day to each of the 
166 houses. It would take him just a trifle over twenty-two hours. 
Cleaning out each house would take him about the same time, 
probably longer, say twenty-six hours. To feed 1000 birds twice 
a day distributed over four houses would take about forty minutes, 
and to clean them out would take about the same time. If houses 
are cleaned out every day there is a clear gain of fifty hours per 
day. In these two items alone, if we reckon an hour as worth 
6d. in labour, we have a saving of 25s. per day, or, say, 
£8, 15s. per week. Even if one cleaned out the houses only three 
times a week the labour would cost approximately £1 per day 
more in looking after 1000 birds in 4 houses than in attending 
to 1000 birds in 166 houses. 
