HER majesty’s poultry-house at the home farm, WINDSOR. 
THE POULTRY BOOK. 
CHAPTER I. 
POULTRY HOUSE AND YARD. 
I ^HE first, and by no means the least important, consideration of every pro- 
- spective poultry keeper is the situation and construction of the houses 
and yards. It is true that poultry may be kept almost anywhere ; first-rate 
specimens of Cochins have been reared in an attic, and many very fine ones 
have never known there was any world beyond a small back yard in the street of 
a country town. These, however, are extreme cases; and success under such 
disadvantageous conditions can only be achieved by constant attention and great 
judgment in supplying artificially those requirements of the birds which the place 
of confinement does not afford. 
The best of all soils on which to establish a poultry yard is gravel, or sand 
resting on chalk or a substratum of gravel. If the soil is clayey, or from other 
causes retentive of wet, the whole should be well drained, and a good breadth of 
it raised artificially by carting on to it a foot depth of chalk or gravel, to be covered 
over with a few inches depth of sand. This is more than desirable — it is almost 
essential to success— stagnant wet in the soil being more inducive than any other 
circumstance of cramp, roup, and some other diseases. 
B 
