February, iqii 
HOUSE AND GARDEN 
73 
warmth, light and sufficient room at a min¬ 
imum of expense. If you dispense with 
a foundation and support the building on 
posts as so many poultry men do, you must 
have a double floor interlined with tarred 
or asphalt roofing paper. This should also 
line the back and sides and cover the roof, 
making a very warm house. Plenty of 
sunlight is essential and you need not pass 
it through glass. Instead, use muslin- 
covered frames at the windows, admitting 
pure air through the night and opened 
wide during the day. Your house will 
serve you as a brooder house during the 
first spring and for adult fowls next year. 
A house ten feet wide and fifty feet long 
will house three hundred laying hens. At 
first I would advise building a house ten 
feet wide, fifteen feet long and five and 
one-half feet high, with single-pitched roof 
and facing toward the south. In the fall, 
thirty-five feet more of building can be 
added to accommodate the fowls if all 
goes well. In summer, with proper pens, 
so much house room is unnecessary, but 
it is necessary for laying hens in winter 
when cold, snow-covered ground would 
curtail laying. Allow the birds free range 
of the interior. 
Discriminate in your choice of stock. 
One naturally turns to thoroughbreds. 
Thoroughbred stock is right when not in- 
bred or bred out of all profitable charac¬ 
teristics. 
If an egg plant is your aim, Leghorns 
will serve you well, but Wyandottes, 
Plymouth Rocks or other medium-weight 
birds will enable you to dispose of your 
surplus cockerels at a larger profit. If 
you learn to select the layers you can work 
them up to a high degree of egg produc¬ 
tion. A number of poultrymen are mak¬ 
ing good with Rhode Island Reds. 
Green food, nitrogenous food, grit, shell, 
charcoal and fresh water must be regular¬ 
ly supplied the fowls. Confined fowls 
must have clean litter always, and abso¬ 
lute cleanliness must prevail in every other 
detail. M. Roberts Conover. 
Two Hints for Chicks 
A good kind of coop is one which per¬ 
mits the chicks to run at large in good 
weather, while the hen is restrained in 
the small wire run attached. The little 
chicks do no harm to flower or vegetable 
garden, but really are of great benefit, by 
consuming prodigious quantities of insect 
life of every description. 
The food of the chicks raised with a 
hen is exceedingly simple. Many of the 
brands of commercial chick foods are en¬ 
tirely satisfactory. A most excellent food 
can be mixed at home, by taking equal 
parts of oatmeal, hominy grits and 
cracked wheat. Chick-size grit, oyster 
shell and charcoal, as well as water, 
should be in reach. After the chicks are 
part grown, say a pound in weight, any 
grain ration, with table scraps, and plenty 
of green stufif, with liberty, will make 
them grow wonderfullv. 
PI. P. 
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