Portable Houses for Farm Use 
i 09 
At all events, in some way or other separation into different flocks is essential if any quantity 
of fowls are to be kept on a large farm. It is necessary for health, and for securing the eggs. It 
is still more necessary to avoid fouling the land itself for other stock, especially pasture land, or 
injuring the crops. For fowls are grazing animals, and one object of their being on the land is that 
they may range over it, eat insects, and drop manure. Properly managed, the land is thus better 
for them * It may be necessary to keep them off shallow-sown seeds for two or three weeks, but 
as a rule, if seed is properly drilled, fowls well fed will not do it any harm. They will also crop 
green-meat if they have no other, but this may be almost entirely prevented by leaving them a 
strip of grass round their house, if permanently placed (and many prefer this plan). In any case, 
it will be little if they are not overstocked in any one field, which is part of the system. A few 
yards of surplus netting, used as required, will meet any special contingency. 
The separation here laid so much stress upon is, however, most of all necessary for that 
* The late Dr. Voelcker made for us in 18S0 a careful analysis of two samples of poultry manure, sent him at our request by 
Mr. O. E. Cress well. One sample was moist and fresh-gathered the morning sent ; the other was in no way dried artificially, but 
had simply been stored a few weeks in a cask : both were taken up along with any sand or earth used for cleanliness in the house. 
The analyses were as follows : Fresh moist manure contained moisture 61-63, organic matter f and salts ammonia 20' 19, tri-basic 
phosphate of lime 2-97, magnesia, alkaline salts, &c., 2-63, sand 12-58=100. Value £2 per ton. Stored manure contained 
moisture 41-06, organic matter % and salts ammonia 38-19, tri-basic phosphate of lime 5-13, magnesia and alkaline salts 3 13, sand 
12-49 = 100. Value £4 4s. per ton. The mode of using Dr. Voelcker recommended is given at page 33, and he adds that such is 
« a much more concentrated fertiliser than the best descriptions of ordinary farmyard manure.” Mr. Cresswell found his Dorkings 
dropped about 2 oz. each of the fresh dung per night ; and it will hence be seen, on reference to page 33, that about a dozen 
fowls per acre, could they be kept over the whole farm, would, with a little gypsum and superphosphate, give the greater part of the 
manure required. That such is not mere theory is shown by a practical farmer, who wrote as follows to the Lire Stoc'e Journal 
in 1877 : “ There is still the most important item to mention -so far as farmers are concerned-the manure. I have this year fully 
tested its value both for corn and root crops. I dressed a ten-acre field of oats in four two-and-a-half-acre lots, alternately with 
artificial top dressing at ^9 per ton, and poultry manure, in equal quantities, and if there was any difference it was in favour of the 
poultry manure. The result was aboW fhe same with swedes and turnips, 8 cwt. of poultry manure proving much better than 
6 cwt. of artificial manure costing £7 10s. per ton. This year my artificial manure bid amounts to less than one-third ofi n-hat it **» 
in 1876, and my thirty acres of swedes and turnips are better than I have had them for years. 
t Containing nitrogen V 7 z = ammonia 209. t Containing ntrogen 3-78 = ammonia V 5 9 - 
K 
