34 2 The Illustrated Book of Poultry. 
valuable as showing upon still another delicate breed (as usually considered) the effect of a natural 
out-door life. 
“ Having,’ he says, “been a breeder and great admirer of this beautiful and useful variety of 
fowls for at least twenty years, though living in one of the coldest and wettest parts of Lancashire, 
on a stiff retentive clay soil, and finding most writers describe the Spanish as tender fowls, I may 
be allowed to give my experience of their hardiness ; for certainly, as they are kept by me, I know 
no variety of fowl so hardy, except the Brahmas. 
“ I hatch my chickens in April or May (even Brahmas do very little good hatched earlier here). 
The chickens are put out with the hen soon after they are hatched, and on no account would I 
keep them in-doors more than twenty-four hours after. They are put with the hen into boxes 
about two feet six inches square, having a door in front, with a square of glass in it. Not more 
than six inches from the bottom of the door I have an opening in one end of the box large enough 
for the hen to go through with ease, into a covered run, two feet six inches from front to back, and 
five feet long. The front of this run is open, with the exception of bars one inch wide placed three 
and a half inches asunder, every other bar of which is made to slide, so that they can be widened 
as the chickens get larger. The front of the box and run faces the south, and the top slopes to 
the north. In these boxes and runs the hens are kept during the whole time they remain with the 
chickens, the broods being placed from fifteen to twenty yards apart, in a large orchard. Each 
brood is placed near a tree suitable for the chickens to perch in, and in which they do begin to 
perch for the night as soon as they are able to fly up to the branches ; and if the branches of the 
tree are too high for them to fly up to while quite young, I place something for them to get upon 
so as to reach them. After they begin to perch in the trees, all fear of deaths from their ‘ going 
light’ or any other disease is over. 
“ The difference between the fledging of even very small Spanish chicks that roost in trees, 
and those in the boxes or houses, is most remarkable. Of those roosting inside, some will not be 
clothed with feathers, except on the wings, at twelve weeks old, and even of those that are 
feathered at that age, many will be rotten-feathered, and others bare on the neck, and without tails ; 
while those that have been roosting in trees, hatched at the same time, and the eggs from the same 
parents, will nearly every one be sound in feather and almost as well-feathered as a Hamburgh 
chick of the same age. Of the broods that roost in boxes, more than half the number (in some 
seasons whole broods) ‘go light’ — i. e., become thin and pine away without any apparent cause — 
some even when half-grown. They appear to take cold with almost every change of weather, or 
with coming out of the warm houses into the cold morning air. A few will have a very slight 
cough for several days, others will not cough at all, but gradually lose colour in the comb ; and 
though they will run after food and appear to feed ravenously, they get lighter and apparently 
smaller, until they begin to droop their wings, and after a time drag themselves along, occasionally 
falling on the ground, until at last they die. The best and right thing to do is to kill these wasters 
at the beginning of the disease ; for they will sometimes live for months without any apparent 
change, but never thoroughly recover. This disease of wasting away never happens with me to 
those chicks that roost in the trees ; so finding this to be the case, as soon as the wing-feathers are 
sufficiently grown, if the chickens do not take to the trees to roost of their own accord, I generally 
lift them one by one out of the box on a fine calm night into the branches of the nearest tree ; 
and unless it rains the night after they seldom require lifting up a second time, but are ready 
enough to go up of themselves. 
“ The chickens that roost out grow very quickly, and are allowed to roost in any tree they 
like ; but a very large mulberry tree is preferred by them to any other. Many of my poultry 
