The front door opens into the main living room. At each end, and in the
rear, are tiers of boxes, one foot wide, one and a half feet long, and
one and a half feet high--the lowest tier elevated two feet above the
ground--and built one tier above the other, and snugly partitioned
between, with a hole at one corner of each, ten inches high, and eight
inches wide, for passing in to them; and a shelf, or passage-board, nine
inches wide, in front. These are the nesting boxes, and should be kept
supplied with short, soft straw, or hay orts, for that purpose. Hens
love secrecy in their domestic economy, and are wonderfully pleased with
the opportunity to hide away, and conceal themselves while laying.
Indeed, such concealment, or the supposition of it, we have no doubt
promotes fecundity, as it is well known that a hen _can_ stop laying,
almost at pleasure, when disturbed in her regular habits and settled
plans of life. Burns says--
"The best laid schemes of _mice_ and _men_
Gang aft agley;"
and why not hen's? We think so. If turkeys be kept in the premises, the
females can also be accommodated in these boxes, as they are fond of
laying in company with the hens, and frequently in the same nests, only
that they require larger entrances into them; or, a tier of boxes may be
made on the ground, for their convenience.
A door leads from the rear of this room into the roosting apartment,
through which is a passage to the back side of the building, and a door
opposite, leading out into the yard. On each side of this passage are
roosts, rising, each behind and above the other, 18 inches apart. The
lowest roosts may be three feet from the ground, and the highest six
feet, that they may easily fly from one to the other; and in this way
they may all be approached, to catch the fowls, when required. For the
roosts, slender poles, two to three inches in diameter--small trees, cut
from the woods, with the bark on, are the best--may be used; and they
should be secured through augur holes in board slats suspended from the
floor joists overhead. This apartment should be cleaned out as often as
once a fortnight, both for cleanliness and health--for fowls like to be
clean, and to have pure air. A flight of stairs may be made in one
corner of the front room, to go into the chamber, if preferred; but a
swing ladder, hung by one end, with hinges, to the joists above, is, for
such purpose, a more cleanly mode of access; which, when not in use, may
be hooked up to the under side of the floor above; and a trap door,
shutting into the chamber floor, and also hung on hinges, will
accommodate the entrance.
For feeding troughs, we have seen many ingenious contrivances, and among
them, possibly, a Yankee patent, or two; but all these we put aside, as
of little account. A common segar box, or any other cast-off thing, that
will hold their food, is just as good as the most complicated invention;
and, in common feeding, there is no better mode than to scatter abroad
their corn, and let them pick it up at their pleasure--when spread on a
clean surface. We think, also, that, except for fattening poultry,
stated hours of feeding are best for the birds themselves, and that they
be fed only such quantity as they will pick up clean. Water should, if
possible, be kept constantly by them; and if a small running stream
could pass through the yard, all the better.
If it be desirable to have fresh eggs during winter--and that is
certainly a convenience--a box stove may be set in the living room, and
properly protected by a grating around it, for warming the living
apartment. It may be remarked, however, that this winter-laying of hens
is usually a _forcing_ business. A hen will lay but about a given number
of eggs in a year; say a hundred--we believe this is about the number
which the most observant of poultry-keepers allow them--and what she
lays in winter must be subtracted from the number she would otherwise
lay in the spring, summer, or autumn. Yet a warm house will, laying,
aside, keep the fowls with less food, and in greater comfort, than if
cold, and left to their own natural warmth.
There is usually little difficulty in keeping hens, turkies, ducks, and
geese together, in the same inclosure, during winter and early spring,
before the grass grows. But geese and turkies require greater range
during the warm season than the others, and should have it, both for
convenience to themselves and profit to their owners. For winter
quarters, low shelters may be made for the water-fowls in the yards, and
the turkies will frequently prefer to share the shelter of the hens, on
the roosts in the house. Guinea-hens--cruel, vindictive things, as they
are--should never be allowed within a common poultry yard. Always
quarrelsome, and never quiet, they should take to the farmyard, with the
cattle, where they may range at will, and take their amusement in
fisticuffs with each other, at pleasure. Neither should peacocks be
allowed to come into the poultry inclosures, during the breeding season;
they are anything but amiable in their manners to other birds.
With the care and management of the poultry department, after thus
providing for their accommodation, it is not our province to interfere;
that is a subject too generally understood, to require further remark.
Nor need we discuss the many varieties of poultry which, at the present
time, so arrest the attention of many of our good country people; and we
will leave so important a subject to the meditations of the "New England
Poultry Society," who have taken the gallinaceous, and other tribes
under their special cognizance, and will, doubtless, in due time,
illumine the world with various knowledge in this department of rural
economy, not yet "dreamt of in our philosophy." The recently published
poultry books, too, with an amplitude and particularity in the
discussion of the different breeds and varieties, which shuts all
suspicions of _self-interest_ into the corner, have given such a fund of
information on the subject, that any further inquiry may, with entire
good will, be turned over to their pages.