PRACTICAL EGG FARMS. 
Interior of Brooder House, Lakewood Farm. 
divided into pens 16 x 16 ft., each pen having 
a door opening into it at the back, the 
front being made up of three windows which 
slide.—the right and left hand sash sliding the 
one in front of and the other behind the center 
one, making the pen two-thircls open-front. 
An enclosed roosting apartment is made after 
the plan of the Maine Agricultural Experiment 
Station curtained-front house. This roosting 
apartment is two and a half feet above the floor, 
and has a solid matched board floor 3 feet wide 
by 13 feet long, and a solid matched partition 
at the end next the door in rear of pen,—the 
solid matched board partition between the pens 
makes the other end. A curtain attached to a 
swinging frame is hinged to the roof, swinging 
out and up, and is hooked up out of the way 
when not in use. It is only necessary to close 
this curtain in front of the roosting pen on the 
very coldest nights of winter,—for ordinary 
weather the closing of the sliding-sash-front is 
sufficient. 
The yards in front of these pens are 90 feet 
long by 16 feet wide and have a scratching pen 
8 feet in depth by 16 feet of width of the yard, 
at the far end, and into the litter in these scratch¬ 
ing pens, all the grain food is thrown when the 
birds can be fed out of doors. In addition to 
these long laying-houses there are three breed¬ 
ing houses 128 feet long, built upon the well- 
known Cyphers plan, of scratching pen in front 
of the laying-roosting pen, and the yards of 
these houses also have the scratching pen at the 
south end. 
A commodious grain-cook house furnishes 
store room for foods and work room as well, and 
the basement is a light and well ventilated in¬ 
cubator cellar, occupied by nine 360-egg Cyphers 
incubators, which were running at their full 
capacity. On the other side of the farm build¬ 
ings is a 110 feet long hot water pipe brooder 
house built on the Cyphers plan, with electric 
regulator, and the thousand or so baby chicks 
were enjoying a ration of Cyphers Chick Food 
as we looked them over. The houses all have 
sand floors, and when we asked Mr. Brown if 
they were bothered by rats, he laughingly said, 
“ No, we drove them all away to the neighbors!” 
AVe were surprised to learn that ’possums had 
bothered them some, but vigorous hunting 
cured that affliction. It is interesting to know 
that not one bird had died from disease there 
in the past year. This speaks volumes for the 
healthfulness of the stock, or the healthfulness 
of the sandy soil there, or the correct methods 
employed; more probably, however, of a com¬ 
bination of the three. To lose not one bird 
by disease in a total of 2,500 carried through 
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