ALTERNATIVE RUNS 239 
the pipes, and a small door is opened at the end of the outside run 
which admits them into a half-acre field, where the chicks of one 
age mix and find their way back to any pen that suits them, some 
pens having then twice the number of chicks of others. The extra 
exercise, it is considered, more than balances the harm which 
might be caused by the extra number of chicks in some of the pens. 
That is all the attention that the chicks get, and they do well on 
it until they are moved out of the brooder-house into the colony 
houses. If any chick does not look well or does not grow as fast 
as the others it is killed. A good many cockerels can be distin- 
guished at six weeks of age. Some are sent to London and fetch 
from 9d. to 1s. each. Others are kept another month or so and 
sold for about 1s. 6d. There is no money in fattening Leghorn 
cockerels, and it is better to get rid of them at any price rather 
than have to give time, labour and house accommodation, which 
would be better spent on the pullets. There is, however, a house 
with alternate yards for cockerels only, on this farm, where the 
cockerels which are wanted for the following year’s breeding 
season are kept over the autumn and winter, running together in 
one flock. No attempt is made to keep them from fighting, and 
the best birds amongst the survivors are then used in the breeding 
pens. A separate compartment and yard of this house is used for 
cockerels which supply our table with poultry. 
No medicine or doctoring is given to the chicks. Those that 
don’t grow well have to perish. 
Such is a system that has proved itself eminently practical. 
No one need hesitate after the success of Mr Hanson to adopt the 
large-scale brooder-house with the central anthracite stove from 
which radiates hot-water pipes. This system gets rid at once of 
the great bugbear of ‘“‘ crowding ” which brings about a huge per- 
centage of mortality. The other method I described of central 
heating with screens to protect the chickens from direct heat seems 
to me to be equally worthy of emulation and experiment. For a 
very large brooder-house several stoves would be necessary, and 
would probably be more expensive than the system of hot-water 
pipes, which distribute the heat throughout the house. 
