156 



POULTRY CULTURE 



Fig. 247. Interior of compartment 



house. (Photograph from Henry 



Van Dreser) 



part. Especially is this true of brooders. Some manufacturers 

 make a specialty of supplying lamps and other brooder parts to 

 those who build their own brooders. 



Roosts. Perches are required for all kinds of poultry but water- 

 fowl and ostriches. Some breeders of heavy Asiatic fowls dispense 



with roosts and bed their fowls 

 on the floor, but this practice is 

 not to be commended. It came 

 into use as a result of the devel- 

 opment of a type of fowl lacking 

 in vitality and in strength pro- 

 portionate to its size and weight, 

 and unable to fly even to a low 

 roost or to balance itself on it. 

 Not only is it the natural habit 

 of fowls, turkeys, etc. to roost 

 at a distance from the ground, 

 but their conformation and feathering are such that if their 

 droppings are at all soft, the feathers below the vent become very 

 badly soiled by voidings made when the birds are sitting on the 

 ground or on a floor, while if the birds were on a perch, the soiling 

 would be slight. Waterfowl which make voidings that are nor- 

 mally semifluid are so formed 

 that the feathers are soiled little 

 if at all by the passage of the 

 excrement. 



The amount of roost room 

 required depends on the size of 

 the birds. An allowance of 7 

 inches for each adult Leghorn, 



9 inches for a Plymouth Rock, 



10 inches for a Brahma or a 

 Cochin, and similar allowances 



Fig. 248. Roosts and roost platform 

 in long house without partitions 



for birds corresponding to these in size gives ample room. Fowls 

 of these classes sitting close on the roost do not occupy so much 

 space as this. The extra allowance of room gives abundant space 

 for the birds to get up and down without crowding or knocking 

 one another from the roost. 



