CHAPTER IX 



COOPS AND BUILDINGS FOR POULTRY 



Poultry architecture in general is conspicuous for endless, and 

 often meaningless, variety in proportions and details. This variety 

 extends to every form of structure for every purpose. From the 

 fact that, provided a few simple rules are observed and other 

 factors properly handled, equally good results may be secured in 



coops and houses differing in many 

 details, such variety is inevitable. 

 But variety is enormously increased 

 because of the number of inexpe- 

 rienced builders who incorporate 

 into the plans that they use un- 

 tested ideas of their own. The 

 features thus produced are some- 

 times objectionable, sometimes 

 merely superfluous, rarely of any 

 value, though some such features 

 have at times been widely imitated 

 because of their supposed relation 

 to good results secured or claimed. In the treatment of the sub- 

 ject in this chapter, discussion of the various styles of structures 

 required for different kinds of poultry, for different branches of 

 the work, and for breeds at different stages of growth will be 

 limited to the more representative styles illustrating the evolution 



1 This is the type of poultry house built by the early settlers in Rhode Island. 

 The houses shown in this and the two following illustrations are supposed to have 

 been built in the latter part of the seventeenth or early in the eighteenth century, 

 and to have been used continuously for poultry ever since. As originally con- 

 structed, the ground floors were several feet below the outside ground level, but 

 in both of these houses the floors have been filled in. Access to the loft in the 

 Almy house is by inside stairway. The loft in the Borden house is entered direct 

 from outside, as shown in Fig. loi. It is said that before the colony system 

 came into use, nearly every farm in this district had one of these houses. A few 

 remain in a good state of preservation, but most have fallen into decay. 



102 



Fig. 99. Stone poultry house about 

 200 years old on the farm of F. W. 

 C. Almy, Tiverton Four Corners, 

 Rhode Island ^ 



