Housing 125 



The moment you shut up your hens in a building you 

 must provide them with the conditions that nature intended 

 that they should have. If you do not, you are bound to suffer 

 in some way. 



You wish to put hens in houses so that they may have 

 shelter. You want to provide them with a proper place to 

 live. You read the poultry papers and they tell you all about 

 building poultry houses, and you build such a house as 

 appeals to you. As to its draught-proof qualities, you think 

 that that is all right because the poultry papers and the 

 poultry books say that such a house had every quality that 

 a good poultry house could possibly have. Yes, they said 

 this and you go ahead and put up your house and the first 

 thing you know you have a flock of roupy hens and you do 

 not know where your trouble comes from. You have placed 

 your hens in a house that at times has a draught in it, and 

 at those times your hens get roup and the trouble begins 

 which puts so many poultry farms out of business. 



When you take a hen that has been running out and getting 

 a natural food and shut her up, you must balance her food 

 properly, because the food she gets in confinement is not the 

 same that she would get in a natural state. If you balance 

 her food correctly, the hen keeps on laying and remains in 

 excellent condition; but if you do not know how to balance 

 her ration, if you do not know of the variations in grain, in 

 fact, if you do not get down to the fine points of feeding, 

 your hen will cease to lay and your trouble begins. The 

 same thing occurs where you put your hens in a building 

 that is not draught proof. The house looks all right, and not 

 knowing that roup actually comes from draught (being mis- 

 led by so many conflicting opinions), you will go on for years 

 losing a large number of your flock from roup, and at the 



