30 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER 
January 9, 
COSGROVE ON HENHOUSES. 
Old readers of The R. N.-Y. may re¬ 
member that my original henhouses were 
made with slanting fronts, and made so 
on the score of economy alone; as I 
found that by bringing the bottom of the 
front out three feet I gained 30 feet of 
floor space (coops being 10 feet long) 
at a cost of only lumber enough to en¬ 
close the triangular space at each end. 
This seemed at the time a very desir¬ 
able thing to do; but I found by experi¬ 
ence that in Winter the snow would 
stick to the glass of the two windows 
in the front and must be swept oft', 
occasionally breaking a glass. In Sum¬ 
mer, when the sliding windows were 
opened, the ground inside would get wet 
with every shower, if I was not there to 
close them. So this Fall I have changed 
them to perpendicular fronts. Now I 
find there is quite a good deal more air 
space inside to be warmed by the hens’ 
bodies, than there was before, with just 
the same floor room. This is an unde¬ 
sirable feature, for all our poultry 
houses have far too much air space. 
Where animals are confined, as in cow 
barns, etc., it is the rule to allow one 
cubic foot of air space for each pound 
of flesh to be housed. If we adopted the 
same rule with poultry, the ordinary 
henhouse would only need to be about 
one foot high; that is, if we gave each 
hen five feet of floor room as is thought 
necessary; on the other hand I believe 
the poultry house which is “comfortable 
for a man to do the work in,” compels 
the hens to warm up a totally unneces¬ 
sary amount of air. With the curtain 
fronts of the modern henhouses, mak¬ 
ing a constant change in the air, the 
necessity of high houses is still less than 
it used to be. It follows therefore that 
there is quite an advantage in the house 
which, while convenient, also has the 
least air space. I append an end outline 
of three styles of houses. The first is 
my old houses; the dotted line showing 
that nearly one-third more floor space is 
added by sloping the front. The second 
shows the same houses changed to per¬ 
pendicular fronts, the dotted lines show¬ 
ing amount of air space added by the 
change. The third shows the useless air 
space above the dotted line of a single 
slope roof, as well as the wasted lumber 
in front. Estimating the distance from 
dotted line to roof to be three feet, then 
in a coop 100 feet long there would be 
300 feet of lumber wasted. This is the 
type of henhouse commonly found on 
farms, with a front nine or 10 feet high, 
making such a large air space inside 
that the hens can never warm it one de¬ 
gree, besides wasting a lot of lumber. 
In the October number of “Farm 
Poultry” the editor has a cut of a low 
poultry house built originally for young 
chicks, but which he has used with sur¬ 
prisingly good results for adult fowls. 
This house is less than five feet high at 
the peak, and not quite three feet at the 
sides, and six feet square on the ground. 
The front is partly closed by a sash in 
Winter or a slatted slide in Summer. 
Eight or nine Brahmas have been kept 
in it. He says: “This house ever since j 
it has been used has attracted the atten¬ 
tion of persons who happened to be 
caring for the fowls by reason of the 
evident contentment and thrift of the 
fowls in it. Even my boy, just in his 
teens, after caring for all the fowls a 
few weeks, discovered that this house 
seemed to have some special virtue.” 
And he further says: “I’ve looked and 
thought that house over a good many 
times, and the only conclusion 1 can 
come to is that the virtue of this house 
is in its lack of height.” In conclusion 
the editor asks this question: “If it 
should appear that fowls will be more 
comfortable and productive in a build¬ 
ing too low for a man to stand in, what 
are we going to do about it? It is not 
a question of cost. In a house which a 
man must enter daily to do the work, 
the inconvenience of a low house more 
than offsets the saving in money by 
building low. But if the low building is 
better for the fowls, the question comes 
up in an entirely different light.” 
It seems to me it would not be at all 
difficult to arrange a low house so that 
all the work could be easily done with¬ 
out going inside. Nests placed on the 
outside with hinged covers, sloping to 
shed rain, would make it easy to gather 
the eggs; and dropping boards arranged 
to pull out like the egg trays of an in¬ 
cubator—a hinged board at back or sides 
making this possible—would solve the 
cleaning question, and with a movable 
sash or shutter frame in front, the whole 
interior surface could be raked or hoed 
out whenever necessary. A feeding 
trough arranged to pull out to put the 
feed in, then be shoved back to its place, 
would make the house complete. If low 
houses with less air space for the bodies 
of the hens to warm are going to make 
hens lay better in Winter they are bound 
to come; and it seems to me here is 
something for the agricultural colleges 
to experiment upon. We wouldn’t think 
of compelling cows to winter in a stable 
with as much air space as there is in a 
church. Yet that is practically what we 
do with hens. geo. a.Xcosgeove. 
SELLING MILK OR MAKING BUTTER. 
Which pays the better, milk at four 
cents a quart at the door, or butter at 28 
cents a pound? J. a. d. 
Massachusetts. 
To make a just comparison one must 
know the quality of the milk. Sold as 
such there is usually little difference 
made in the price paid, between that 
which is above the standard, say 3^2 
per cent fat, and that which contains 
five per cent. There should be more 
discrimination; the latter is intrinsically 
worth more, because it contains more 
other solids, beside the fat, than does 
the former, and costs more to produce 
the high grade, too, because a cow will 
not give as much of it. Milk testing 3j^ 
per cent will require a little over 12 
quarts to make a pound of butter; 
that testing five per cent not much over 
eight quarts. You can readily see that 
even with this grade of milk you can¬ 
not with price at four cents, afford to 
make it into butter at less than 40 cents 
a pound. Then you put the labor and 
necessary machinery to do the work, 
against the skim-milk. While the latter 
is of great value, whether one can afford 
to let it offset the former, is purely an 
individual matter, depending on the 
value of his time and convenience, as 
well as how profitably he employs his 
skim-milk. From the above it must be 
apparent that with present prices of milk, 
and they are not too high, except with 
a fancy price we cannot afford to make 
blitter. EDWARD VAN ALSTYNE. 
SGOR 
AT GRE AT DAIR Y SHOW 
At the great National Dairy Show held recently in Chicago, cream 
skimmed with DE LAVAL separators won all highest honors. The cream 
exhibits were made in two classes and the winners in each were as follows, 
all being users of DE LAVAL hand separators: 
Score 98% 
Score 94 
Score 94 'A 
M A II Iv E T C It E AM 
1st Prize, Gold fledal, G. C. Repp, Ohio .... 
2nd Prize, Silver Medal, W. R. Newberry, Ohio 
€E ItTIFIE I) C It E A M 
1st Prize, Gold Medal, Tully Farms, New York . 
The contest was under the direction of the Dairy Division of the United 
States Department of Agriculture, Washington, and Mr. Repp’s winning 
exhibit in the Market class was pronounced practically perfect and given the 
highest score ever awarded by the Dairy Division. 
For the past twenty years butter made from DE LAVAL cream has won 
all highest honors in every important contest. Sixteen of the largest 1908 
State Fairs awarded their first prize to I)E LAVAL butter and now comes this 
sweeping victory for I)E LAVAL cream in the big Dairy Show contest, which 
only goes further to prove that DE LAVAL machines are head and shoulders 
above every other skimming device in every feature of separator use. 
A DE LAVAL catalogue tells v/hy DE LAVAL cream is always superior. 
Ask for it today, or, better still, let us demonstrate the merits of a 1)E LAVAL 
separator in your own dairy. 
THE DE LAVAL SEPARATOR CO 
42 E. Madison Street 
CHICAGO 
1213 & 1215 Filbert St. 
PHILADELPHIA 
Drum in & Sacramento Sts 
SAN FRANCISCO 
General Offices: 
165-167 BROADWAY, 
NEW YORK. 
173-177 William Street 
MONTREAL 
14 & 16 Princess Street 
WINNIPEG 
107 First Street 
PORTLAND, OR EG. 
CREAM SEPARATOR SPECIAL 
Wo offer for a short time OMEGA CREAM 
SEPARATORS for spot cash as follows :— 
No. 1—Capacity 385 lbs.—.*$50.00 
No. 8—Capacity IOO lbs.— $55.00 
2so. 3—Capacity 500 IPs. *00.00 
No. 4—Capacity < OO lbs.- djiTO.OO 
Wo Pay Tlio Prcigltt. 
RAWLINGS IMPLEMENT CO., Baltimore, Md. 
FEARLESS 
Manure Spreader 
r> 
The ‘Fkarobss" Spreader, built narrow, 
II spreads wide, because the circular beater 
distributes outside the wheels. Covers 
ovenly a six and one-half foot strip, spread¬ 
ing from a three foot box. Passes a farm 
gate easily ns an ordinary heavy wagon. 
Means fewer trips to the field ami nodriv- 
Q lug over manure already spread. 
Hn Write at once for free booklet, 
f . HARDER MFG. COMPANY 
r®' Let Us Send You 
Our Book. 
about good wheels and good wagons that will save 
you u lot of work and make you a lot of money —tlio 
ELECTRIC STEEL WHEELS 
-and the- 
ELECTRIC HANOT WAGON. 
By every test, 1 hey are the best. Moro than one and 
a quarter millions sold. Spoltes united to the 
hub. Can’t work loose. A set of our wheels will 
make your old wagon now. catalogue free. 
ELECTRIC WHEEL CO., Box fiR , Quincy, Ills. 
LARK'S‘CUTAWAY’’ 
We make 120 
sizes & styles of 
Disk Harrows 
for every purpose. Farmers and 
Orchardlsts increase their crops 
2a to 504. Let us prove this. Send 
today for our FREU Booklet and 
BPeem; prices. Cutaway Harrow Co. 
8.49 Main Street, iligganum. Conn. 
Get Out* Faclsrj Price 
Direct to You 
On 30 Days Approval Test- 
Gash or Time—Freight Allowed 
It costs you nothing—at our risk—to 
test tbe Detroit Tongueless on your 
work for a month. 
We sell only direct, so take this way of 
proving to you that imitations of the 
Detroit Tongueless are in no way its 
equal. We have no dealers or agents so 
you save their profits on the price you 
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ftfiTTD/IIT YongueBess 
SL&Sim S B Disc Harrow 
The Forward Truck docs away with all of the annoyance on the 
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tion to you and new 1908-9 Catalog sent FREE. 
AMERICAN HARROW COMPANY 
162 (Hastings St., Detroit, 
Branch houses in all trade centers 
enable us to make prompt 
shipments. Get an Amer¬ 
ican Manure Spreader 
or Detroit Tongue¬ 
less Disc Har¬ 
row by or¬ 
dering 
early. 
