84o 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER 
November 25, 
THE HEN AS A "SNOWBIRD.” 
How to make fowls profitable in the 
Winter months is a problem that many 
good poultrymen fail to solve. When a 
liock of hens that have been roaming over 
several acres of free range every day are 
confined to a small house by a fall of 
snow, and the conditions of their daily 
life radically changed, it is no wonder that 
fewer eggs are laid, and profits dwindle 
away to nothing. Of the ordinary flocks 
of hens probably not one in 10 pays the 
cost of keeping from November to the first 
of March. As I have been very fortunate 
in getting eggs in Winter, this article is 
written with the hope that some who are 
less successful may obtain helpful ideas. 
HOUSING.—I am an advocate of plen¬ 
ty of fresh air, and the scratching shed 
plan of poultry houses seems to furnish 
air and exercise with sufficient protection 
from the weather to obtain good results. 
Fig. 366 is a picture of the west end of 
one row of poultry houses connected to¬ 
gether by scratching sheds. The first 
three houses I made in sections, and 
moved them from their first location to 
where they now stand 10 years ago. They 
are 10 feet square on the ground, and 10 
feet apart, connected by sheds which need¬ 
ed only back and roof, as the houses 
formed the ends, the front being wire net¬ 
ting. The coops have slanting fronts, 
partly because economy was a necessity in 
those days, and the slanting front gave me 
30 feet more floor space than a perpen¬ 
dicular front, at a cost of less than one dol¬ 
lar for the triangular ends. The advan¬ 
tages of the slanting front are increased 
floor space at little cost, and the striking 
of the sun’s rays at nearly a right angle in 
Winter, giving a better lighted and heated 
interior than a perpendicular front. The 
disadvantages are raining in when win¬ 
dows are open in Summer, and snow col- 
' lecting on the windows in Winter. 
STYLE OF HOUSE.—I am not in 
favor of deep henhouses; they should be 
narrow enough to let the sunshine pene¬ 
trate nearly or quite to the rear, with the 
windows 12 to 15 inches above the ground. 
I passed a farm to-day where the owner 
had just built on, doubling the size of his 
henhouse. The windows were three feet 
or more above the grounc. No scratch¬ 
ing sheds; no chance to get in the sun¬ 
shine when they are shut in by the snow; 
while in my houses the whole floor would 
be covered with hens wallowing in the 
soft dry earth with legs extended, wings 
spread out, basking in the warm rays of 
the sun. And then this man will wonder 
why my hens lay so much better in 
Winter than his. 1 take pains to keep the 
scratching material out of the henhouses, 
and keep the surface inside raked off 
reasonably clean, so the hens can have a 
good place to wallow in. This is one of 
the “little things” that is important, as is 
everything that goes to making the hens 
comfortable. As to floor space per hen, 
my hens get along very nicely and lay 
quite well on much less floor space than 
the rule of “five square feet per hen.” In 
the house next the cooking shed shown in 
Fig. 366, 64 hens roosted last Winter; with 
the scratching shed there was only 180 
square feet of surface, less than three feet 
per hen; yet they laid well and kept 
healthy. 
A CROWDED HOUSE.—Fig. 365. In 
the brooder house 125 pullets roosted, 
using the partly enclosed shed adjoining 
for a scratching room, the total floor space 
occupied being 320 square feet; yet I got 
70 eggs a day part of the time from these 
pullets. In the three Winter months, De¬ 
cember. January and February, my hens 
laid 10,878 eggs, the lowest number re¬ 
ceived being 54. on December 5, and the 
highest 231 on February 27. Last Winter, 
—as will be remembered,—was an exceed¬ 
ingly cold, cloudy, and unfavorable sea¬ 
son. The above are the two worst cases 
of overcrowding that I had; not all my 
hens were in such close quarters; those 
reserved for breeding had more room, but 
so far as I remember the egg output was 
not noticeably increased thereby. But it 
must not be forgotten that to have hens 
do well in such close quarters much more 
care is needed. The floor surface must be 
raked off more frequently; the litter re¬ 
newed oftener and there is more danger 
from lice, also from disease. I do not 
want to be quoted as recommending such 
crowding; I only instance the above to 
show that it can be done without ill effect 
where sufficient care and skill are used. 
INTERIOR FITTING.—Fig. 367 shows 
the interior arrangement. The roosts are set 
in slots in the standards, so they can be 
readily lifted out and turned over to look 
for lice, for the lice are alwavs on the un¬ 
der side of the roosts. The platform 
catching the droppings gives the hens the 
use of the entire floor, and the set of nests 
does not touch the house and can be eas¬ 
ily taken outside to be cleaned if neces¬ 
sary. The usual farmer’s arrangement of 
three slanting skids with poles nailed fast, 
one higher than another for roosts makes 
it impossible for him to kill the lice 
which fill every crack and crevice on the 
under side, and the instinct of the hens 
BACK OF THE SECTIONAL HOUSE. Fro. 364. 
BROODER HOUSE USED FOR WINTER LAYERS. Fig, 365. 
THE SNOWBOUND HEN AT HOME, Fig. 367, 
to roost out of the reach of prowling ani¬ 
mals makes them all struggle to get on 
the top roost, crowding each other off, 
sometimes being seriously injured by the 
fall. With windows so high that sunshine 
never touches the floor, it’s no wonder 
that AVinter eggs are scarce. 
FEEDING.—This is where judgment 
comes in; I do not weigh or measure the 
quantity fed. In fact it varies according 
to the eagerness displayed by the fowls. 
I feed the mash at night, that is about 4.30 
P. M. In the morning 1 scatter in the 
sheds about a pint and a half to each 25 
fowls of cracked corn and wheat,—or 
barley and cracked corn. This sets them 
to work; at noon a less amount of the 
same. At 4 P. M. I stir into the skim- 
milk (20 to 24 quarts) enough fine mid¬ 
dlings to make a thick batter, first put¬ 
ting in a tablespoonful of salt and about 
three quarts of animal meal or beef scraps. 
Then I put in enough cornmeal and bran, 
—one part meal to two parts bran,—to 
make a crumbly mass when thoroughly 
mixed. In Winter I cut up clover or 
rowen hay, and mix in the mash, and 
three times a week boil a potful of small 
potatoes, mash them and mix them hot in 
the mash. The Maine Experiment Sta¬ 
tion found that the difficulty of their 
hens becoming too fat was overcome by 
giving light feeds in litter of dry grain 
morning and noon, thus compelling exer¬ 
cise ; then a full feed of mash at night. 
Connecticut. geo. a. cosgrove. 
GASOLINE HEATED BROODER . 
The new system of brooding little chicks 
used by us with colony-house brooders, 
'heated by gasoline burners instead of 
kerosene lamps or stoves, has stood the 
tests for three years, and we are satisfied 
it is the only way for us to raise chicks 
on a large scale. Its disadvantage is that 
most people arc not used to gasoline, and 
do not understand its nature. Like dyna¬ 
mite. gasoline gas is very explosive, and 
for this reason everybody cannot be trust¬ 
ed with its use, and we do not advise any¬ 
one who is satisfied with his present meth¬ 
ods of brooding with kerosene lamps to 
make a change, but of those who have 
tried our system, as far as we know, none 
would go back to the old way. 
It is hard to describe the working of a 
gasoline burner to those who never saw or 
used one, as the principle is so different 
from a kerosene lamp. In the first place 
the gasoline burner has to be very hot be¬ 
fore it will work well, and we all know 
what happens when a lamp becomes very 
hot, either in a brooder or elsewhere. The 
advantages of gasoline are, first, the in¬ 
tense heat you can obtain from one burn¬ 
er, the evenness with which it runs, the 
absence of all smoke or fumes, and the 
saving of time in caring for them, as we 
only have to fill the tanks twice a week 
in ordinary weather, and they never re¬ 
quire trimming or manipulating unless we 
have a violent change of weather. Ours 
is a stove burner with an igniter attach¬ 
ment, which is an arrangement by which 
a very small jet of flame is turned on the 
burner to keep it hot when not in use, 
so that it can be lighted whenever wanted 
by turning the burner on. This little ig¬ 
niter flame is all we use in heating one 
of our colony-houses, which cares for 
from 150 to 200 chicks. This burner, is 
contained in a galvanized iron lamp box 
underneath the house, and is connected 
with the tank, which is above the roof, 
by quarter-inch pipe in such a manner that 
the burner with pipe and tank can be re¬ 
moved in a few seconds,yftnd can be used 
with another house when the first chicks 
do not peed the heat. The hover is left 
in the house some time after the heat is 
taken away, but as soon as the chicks can 
be trusted to roost, we remove the hover 
and heater drum, and put in perches. 
Right here we find another advantage 
in this system. Every experienced poultry 
man has had more or less trouble in 
changing the chicks from the small brood¬ 
ers to houses, for with the old method of 
brooding you cannot leave the chicks in 
the brooders more than three months at 
the longest, but with our system it is only 
a few minutes’ work to remove hover and 
heater drum and place perches, and the 
chicks are never moved from the houses 
they are accustomed to. By adding nests 
we use these houses the entire year. With 
the old style of small brooders, if a man 
wished to raise 1,500 or 2,000 chickens, he 
would -need 20 or more brooders, making 
at least $200 invested, which he could only 
use for three or four months of the year, 
and then he would need a further invest¬ 
ment of $20 for a house to store the brood¬ 
ers eight months of the year. We have 
built these houses for $12, and a neighbor¬ 
ing poultry man has had them built from 
the best material by a good carpenter for 
$18. These houses can be easily moved 
to fresh ground by one horse and a stone 
boat, and we move them every year. This 
Winter we shall bring them up close to 
the feed room, so as to be handy to care 
for during the snowy weather, and when 
we need them next Spring for chicks they 
will move again. flqyd q , white, 
J 
