12 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
[Januaut, 
roost about 10 degrees higher thau it is outside, 
but further than this no effort should be made 
Fi<r. 'X — house for early-hatched pullets 
to retain heat at the risk of impure air. Fowls 
that have free range in the daytime the year 
round, and roost in buildings open on all sides 
in summer and partially open in spring and fall, 
•will not be injured by an attempt to strike a 
balance between warmth and ventilation during 
a few brief periods of extreme cold. 
Figure 2 represents a house for the earliest 
hatched pullets that are expected to lay more in 
winter than the others, and are, therefore, shel- 
tered at greater expense. Winter laying de- 
pends more on breed, age, feeding, and health, 
than upon warm rooms. Heat is necessary to 
productiveness, but a fowl kept in full vigor and 
good appetite by exercise, will be warm where 
a dull, mopish one would shiver. It will not 
pay to build expensive fowl-houses, and the ar- 
rangement we are about to describe involves as 
much outlay as is advisable, in order to se- 
cure Warmth, excepting for some special pur- 
poses. A mound of earth, nearly circular, and 
25 feet broad at the narrowest point, is raised 
by scraping with the team. It should be 3S feet 
high at the center, and slope gradually to a lev- 
el with the surface of the field. Upon this 
mound a cellar is dug 7J feet by 14*, and 3 feet 
ileep, the bottom being 6 inches higher than the 
average of the surface beyond the mound. The 
cellar is walled substantially with stone, laid in 
cement, and floored with the latter material. 
Stations furnished with such cellars are upon 
r^=- 
Fig. 4. — TEMPORARY SHELTERS. 
a part of the farm where there is a gentle i 
slope, and, wherever necessary, a tile drain | 
is put under the foundations of the walls. 
The floor of an underground fowl-house 
-- must always be 
. a little higher than 
the adjoining field, 
not on account of 
drainage alone, but 
for ventilation. No 
room is fit to be 
occupied by stock, 
that can not be 
ventilated at bot- 
tom. In this cellar 
the walled 'passage 
at A admits air 
within 8 inches of 
the floor, which is 
covered with dry 
earth to that depth. 
The walls arc 
topped with plank-sills, upon the outer etlgi a 
of which the runners of the itinerant build- 
ing rest, caulking being resorted to as in the 
previous case. It 
will not answer to ijfsii-: :- 
house fowls in sui'h "-; 
a place unless there 
is plenty of glass 
above, and the south 
roof, therefore, 
contains five long 
windows, instead of 
two short ones, as 
in the other cases, 
each door being 
furnished with one. 
There is a shatter 
(B) to correspond 
with each window. 
( >ih<-i wise the house 
is of the usual pat- 
tern, and the win- 
ter sheds and feed- 
room are attached 
to it, though omit- 
ted in the figure so 
as to show the em- 
bankment plainer. 
The house and 
mound have a bleak look in the illustration, 
but the sheds will make the whole sheltered 
and cosy. The usual board- 
ed passage (not shown 
in the cut) connects the 
, v , -,-.--, .^ ...,..- - feed-room witli the tunnel 
at .1. There are sunny days 
enough in winter to keep 
the earth-bed inside perfectly 
dry, and the air will be no 
damper than in an unglazed 
apartment entirely above 
ground. Straw mats of 
the greenhouse pattern are 
used at night upon the north 
roofs of all the buildings for 
ubout two months in winter. 
The amount of solar heat 
accumulated during a clear 
winter's day in a pit roofed 
with glass is surprising, 
and this is to be retained as 
long as possible, always re- 
membering, however, to give 
ventilation its due. Summer 
and winter the admission 
of air must be gauged by 
every change of wind and 
weather. It is one of the advantages of busi- 
ness upon a large scale, that operations which 
it would not pay to attend to with one flock, 
may be afforded where Ihere are many. 
The buildings are kept over the cellars only 
in winter, and are drawn on and off the sills 
above the walls by the use of small rollers, and 
a horse attached to tackle. The cellars must 
not lie idle after the houses are moved, but be 
roofed with the platforms for drying earth, and 
a few movable greenhouse sashes, and used as 
shelter for chickens. 
The stations when arranged for winter should 
preserve the dissimilar appearance mentioned 
in the first article, so that the fowls may be able 
to distinguish their own houses. Each building 
being colored in summer uulike those immedi- 
ately adjoining it, the plan is carried out in win- 
ter by coloring the sheds attached to each 
house like itself. By using a very wide brush, 
the lime-wash, or coal-tar, is applied in a short 
time. 
In addition to the sheds above described, 
other protection against the weather in winter 
is provided by adjusting some of the earth plat- 
Fi^ 
—SHELTERS FOR CHICKENS. 
forms as seen at A (fig. 3), and tlie basement part 
of I ho chicken-coops are propped up (B) and cov- 
ered with boards, and the floors to the same are 
arranged as at C (Qg. 4). In the same cut D rep- 
resents a shade for chickens in summer, made 
of the rails used in winter for the sheds, cov- 
ered by straw from the north roof of the layers' 
houses, with brush or corn-stalks added to keep 
the wind from blowing it away. Shade for the 
laying stock is provided by taking the winter 
dust-bins and propping them in a slanting posi- 
tion (B, fig. 3), and nailing slightly a few boards 
across, and thatching with the mats used in win- 
ter upon the houses. This contrivance is drawn 
upon the ground, by the team, occasionally, so 
as to never be very- far from the building when 
me latter is shifted, and some of the platforms 
are moved about for the same purpose when 
not employed in the dry-earth harvest. By 
using earth platforms at one station, straw-mat 
screens at another, and movable booths of ever- 
green boughs at a third, neighboring premises 
are made to look unlike. In this way all the 
various fixtures in the whole establishment 
are kept in use summer and winter, and chick- 
ens and grown fowls are sheltered from sun, 
wind, aud rain under structures that afford a 
great deal of ground room, which is what counts, 
yet they are low like the houses, and, therefore, 
made with but little lumber. 
