90 
THE POULTEY BOOK. 
they become fit for the fatting-coop at the age of about four months in summer, 
and from five or six in winter. It cannot be too strongly impressed upon those 
W’ho are desirous of obtaining chickens of first-rate quality, that fowls are only in 
perfection for the table before they have attained their complete development. The 
male birds should be put up when ‘‘ their tails begin to turn,” namely, just when 
the two long sickle-feathers or streamers begin to top the straight feathers of the 
tail ; and the pullets before they have laid. 
The house in which poultry are fattened should be free from draughts of 
cold air, and kept at a moderately warm and uniform temperature ; the roof, 
therefore, if of tiles, should be thickly lined with straw. Quietude being espe- 
cially desirable, the house should be so situated as not to be accessible to the fowls 
at liberty ; and it should be partially darkened, if possible. It is also important, 
in the highest degree, that it should be perfectly dry, as it is scarcely necessary to 
add, that a fowl suffering from cold and inflammation is not likely to fatten. 
The fatting coops should be two feet six or eight inches high in front, and 
about two feet deep, with a boarded roof sloping backwards ,* the back and ends 
should be closed, and the bottom made of flat bars with rounded edges, two inches 
wide at the top and narrower beneath, so as to prevent the dung sticking to the 
sides. These bars should run from end to end of the coop (not from back to 
front), and they should be two inches apart on the upper sides. The front of 
the coop should consist of rounded bars, three inches apart ; and two rods con- 
nected together below, and sliding through holes made in the roof, will be found 
more secure than a door. Before the front should run a ledge to support the 
feeding-troughs, which are best made by joining two pieces of wood at a right 
angle, and securing the ends by letting them into grooves in stout end-pieces. 
The fatting-coops should stand on legs to raise them a convenient height 
from the ground, so that the dung may be removed daily ; or each may have a 
shallow drawer underneath, wdiich is daily filled with fresh earth — an admirable 
plan, which we first saw used at the Clumber aviaries. The most scrupulous 
cleanliness must be observed, otherwise disease will be produced. The coops, 
therefore, should be lime-washed (with freshly slaked lime and water), and then 
thoroughly dried before a fresh batch of fowls is introduced. 
In cold weather, the front should be covered up with matting, or some other 
warm material, at night. 
The length of the coop must depend on the number of fowls that it is re- 
quired to contain ; but it is never advisable to place more than ten or a dozen 
together ; and if strange fowls are put up, care must be taken that they agree 
well together, as otherwise the constant excitement w^ould prevent their fatting. 
It occasionally happens, that fowls are infested with lice to such a degree that 
they become irritable, and refuse to fatten ; in these cases, a little of the flowers 
of brimstone dusted under the feathers, before cooping them, immediately expels 
the vermin. 
The fowls when first cooped had better be left some hours without food. By 
