1904.] Poultry Rearing and Fattening. 261 



successful poultry raising is to secure suitable breeding stock, 

 and in the Irish districts to which I have referred, although the 

 hens may be, and nearly always are, mongrels, yet care is taken 

 to select the best of them — those which are fully matured, in 

 robust health, well-shaped, with long, broad, and deep bodies and 

 prominent breasts — as breeding stock, and in the selection of 

 a male bird as much care is exercised as the average farmer uses 

 when he buys a ram or a bull to head his flock or his herd. 



Portable Chicken Coop. 



Next in importance to the careful selection of the breeding 

 stock comes the choice of ground, houses, and appliances. The 

 soil on most farms in the south-east of Ireland is of a nature 

 very well adapted for chicken raising, and it is only necessary for 

 farmers to use some discretion in choosing a field that has a 

 southern aspect and is well sheltered. The houses recommended 

 by the societies are of the portable wooden type, and the most 

 successful chicken raisers now use the portable wooden chicken- 

 coop, and rear their birds on the fields at some distance from the 

 farmyard. The labourers still depend on their half-acre plots 

 and on the roadsides as the only rearing grounds available. 



