1908.] Housing and Feeding of Poultry. 



ioi 



EXPERIMENTS IN THE HOUSING AND FEEDING 

 OF POULTRY. 



Edward Brown, Lecturer in Aviculture, and Will Brown, 

 Practical Instructor in Aviculture, University College, 

 Reading. 



Within recent years many changes have taken place in the 

 methods of housing and feeding poultry. In America 

 what has been known as the Colony System has been largely 

 adopted, especially in Rhode Island and New Jersey. By 

 this method a much larger number of birds can be kept 

 on a given area of land than has been regarded as desirable 

 in Britain, in some cases as many as 200 per acre. The fowls 

 are placed out on one or more fields, accommodated in houses, 

 each of which holds 30 to 50 hens. As a rule no fences are 

 used and all the birds run together, but where it is necessary to 

 keep them from adjoining fields a fence of wire netting is placed 

 around the entire area given up to them. The ground thus 

 allocated to the fowls is occupied entirely for one or two years, 

 as may be deemed desirable, at the end of which time houses 

 and inmates are removed to another part of the farm, and the 

 vacated ground is not occupied again by poultry for three or 

 four years,, as it is considered that the manure produced by 

 the birds will exert its influence upon the crops grown for that 

 period. From the experiments previously recorded in the 

 Journal of the Board of Agriculture, Vol. XIII, p. 719 (March, 

 1907), it would appear that, at the rate of 100 birds per acre, 

 four tons of moist manure would enter into the soil during 

 twelve months on that area. Descriptions of this system are 

 given in Mr. Edward Brown's Report on the Poultry Industry in 

 America* and in the paper by Mr. J. H. Robinson, read at 

 the Second National Poultry Conference, 1907. f 



In America within recent years a new method of feeding 

 has received a large amount of attention. This is known as 

 the Hopper System. The food is placed in wooden hoppers, 

 holding a quarter or half a hundredweight, or a supply 

 for about a fortnight according to the number of birds. 

 The hopper has a tray into which the food auto- 



* London : National Poultry Organisation Society, 1 906. 



t London : Official Report of the Second National Poultry Conference, 1907. 



