Jasper County Democrat, Volume 15, Number 5, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 April 1912 — POULTRY [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

POULTRY

POULTRY HOUSE FOR FARMER Expensive and Elaborate Structure is Not Necessary, but Dry, Well Ventilated One is. (By J. W. GRIFFIN.) The size of our home poultry-build-ing is 16x40 feet, 6 feet at the front eave, and 7 at the rear eave, and 8 feet at the comb. The floor should be the natural’’earth if the house is located on a well drained place. If not, there should, of course, be a plank floor. For the convenience of the keeper, the building shjgfcld be divided into three rooms in the front part; the hallway at the rear should run the entire length of the building. The hallway is 4 feet wide; this will leave the three rooms 12x13 feet. The partitions between these rooms should be made solid two and onehalf feet high. The rest of the partition can be of poultry-wire netting. The upper part of the partition between the hallway and the rooms is made of wire netting. In the hallway we keep the supply of - food for the poultry, and a few’ barrels of roaddust that we gather up during a dry time in the summer. This is for the dust-boxes during the winder, when the hens should not be out on the cold ground. The Watering and feeding troughs are set along the slatted partition, just inside the hallway; the chickens reach through betw’een the slats for their food and water. The nests are placed on a platform just above the slatted part of the partition, and the dropping-board is

placed on the and the perches on the dropping-boards. The platform for the nests, the dropping-boards, and the perches are put in in divisions, three of 13 feet each. This facilitates the cleaning as all of the interior arrangements are removed at housecleaning-time, which is twice a year—spring and fall. This is the general cleaning time; the pens are cleaned each week, and the dropping-boards each day. The manure saved by cleaning the drop-ping-boards each day from a hundred hens pays handsomely, not only in the value of the manure, but in keeping the house'cleanly, The, boxes, are each one complete within itself. The openings of the curtained windows are covered with poultry netting. The house is made perfectly tight except the curtained Windows. There is a ventilator in each end at the gable •or summer ventilation. The floors of the pens should be covered with cut straw, or better still, dry leaves gathered in the fall and stored away to lie used through the w inter. The grain food w’hen scattered in chese leaves or straw gives the fowls

the much needed exercise. The dry mash-feeds and meat-scraps, etc., are fed In the troughs. The interior should be thoroughly sprayed with lime-and-sulphur solution. Use equal parts of lime apd sulphur in making the whitewash and you will not be troubled with liee, chiggers or mites that trouble the poultry.

Hallway in Poultry House.

Poultry House.