WITH 4200 HENS 19 



that point. Mark it if you see a chance of this occurring 

 so that your builder will give you a high wall there. 

 Don't set your feed house in a depression if you can help 

 it; if you can't avoid it, be sure you have high concrete 

 walls all around, and have the cement man plaster the 

 concrete with top dressing after it has set. This will make 

 it waterproof ; ordinary concrete is not. 



If your land slopes heavily you must bear in mind that 

 your hens, and your chicks also, will help it in its sloping 

 movement; most of their lives when they are outdoors 

 will be spent in helping your land on its natural down- 

 hill movement. The floor of your house on the down 

 hill side should be level with the ground if you are on a 

 modest slope ; on a heavy slope you can better afford to 

 grade the building site so as to have a level space of 5 or 

 6 feet in front of the building, even though this means 

 a very high wall in back to turn the rain-flow. The back 

 walls on some of our laying houses reach to within a foot 

 of the dropping-boards. There is no disadvantage in this. 



If you can spare the space, leave a passageway of say 

 10 feet between the outer lines of your property and your 

 chicken yards and houses. This means double fences but 

 it also means that you have a margin of safety for birds 

 flying the fences of their yards and a margin of safety 

 also against prowling animals — both four-and-two-legged. 

 If your neighbor keeps hens there is less danger of the 

 flocks becoming mixed and lice or sickness communi- 

 cating. You can plant this passageway in green stuff 

 or garden truck and it will not be wasted, although it 

 will be a bit more troublesome to care for a long narrow 

 strip of this kind. But it is well worth the effort. 



