504 A Poultry Farm in Huntingdonshire. 
that have been made, one of them has tried poultry farming on 
a somewhat large scale. The farmer who has tried this lives at 
Kimbolton, and up to a year or so ago he farmed a good-sized 
farm of between 500 and 600 acres ; but finding things were 
going badly, he gave up the larger farm and retained one of 
about 100 acres only, and it is upon this that he is trying 
poultry farming. The soil of the farm is a tolerably stiff clay, 
and most of it is already, or will very soon be, drained. It is 
farmed pretty much on the four-course system, and the poultry 
is the chief live-stock kept upon it. 
The farmer had kept poultry in some numbers for the past 
five or six years whilst he held his larger occupation, but he 
had not kept a separate and distinct account relating to them 
till the year 1880, and since he had given up that occupation. 
He stated that he was trying the system because of the very 
large importations of poultry and eggs into this country, and 
because he thought that poultry, if properly attended to and 
treated in a business-like way, would pay. He kept fowls only, 
not ducks, geese, or turkeys. He had tried various breeds of 
fowls, but preferred the light Bramahs to all others, because 
from experience he had found that breed to be the hardiest 
and most prolific. His stock at the time of my visit (October 
1881) consisted of about 1800 head, which in the winter would 
be reduced by some 300 or 400, so that at that period of the 
year he would have about 1400 or 1500. He keeps no old stock, 
but sells all his birds before or when they are two years old. 
He is careful to have fresh blood in his stock every year, and 
for that purpose periodically introduces three or four male birds 
of some other strain than his own of the light Bramah breed. 
His stock has always been healthy, and absolutely free from any 
epidemic during the six years that he has kept it, and though 
he has occasionally lost a few birds, his losses from disease have 
been very trifling. He keeps the poultry partly in yards at the 
farm-homestead, and partly in the fields. There are nine yards 
at the homestead of different sizes, for convenience sake, and 
separated from each other by wire netting ; and attached to or 
near them are houses for the fowls, such houses being parts of 
the farm-buildings adapted for that purpose. The fowls in the 
fields are divided into different lots, each lot containing about 
150 birds, and having a separate fowl-house ; these houses are 
about 16 feet long by 8 feet wide, and 6 feet high up to the 
eaves of the roof, and contain from 750 to 800 cubic feet each, 
or rather more than 5 cubic feet to a bird. They are built of 
wood, and are moved from one part of a field to another very 
easily by one horse. The field-houses, when I saw them, were 
on a piece of land that had been laid down to grass about two 
