Farmers’ Bulletin, No. 141, says: “Poultry houses need not be elaborate
in their fittings or expensive in construction. There are certain
conditions, however, which should be insisted upon in all cases. In
the first place, the house should be located upon soil which is well
drained and dry. A gravelly knoll is best, but, failing this, the site
should be raised by the use of the plow and scraper until there is
a gentle slope in all directions sufficient to prevent any standing
water even at the wettest times. A few inches of sand or gravel on the
surface will be very useful in preventing the formation of mud. If the
house is sheltered from the north and northwest winds by a group of
evergreens, this will be a decided advantage in the colder parts of the
country.”
In “Building Poultry Houses,” Professor Rice says: “Poultry keeping is
an exacting business. The four corner-stones upon which success rests
are:
(1) Suitable buildings, properly located.
(2) The right foods, skilfully fed.
(3) Good fowls, carefully bred.
(4) Facility and ability to hatch and rear chickens.”
Here we find that “suitable buildings, properly located,” is the first,
hence most important, of the four corner-stones upon which success with
poultry rests, and in giving the buildings this prominence we believe
the professor is entirely right. No one thing does more to promote, or
hinder, success with poultry than the buildings, hence the importance
of a wise decision as to which of the many different patterns of houses
is best adapted to your purpose.
[Illustration: FIG. 1—A plan to secure dryness.]
_Select a dry location_; if the ground is not naturally dry make
it so by draining it. The first illustration gives a plan for making
the interior of a poultry house absolutely dry, if the ground is fairly
well drained. The foundation walls are built up about eighteen inches
above the ground level; about twelve inches of this space is filled in
with small stones or coarse gravel, and the balance with fine sand or
dry, sandy loam; on the outside the ground is sloped up to the level
of the bottom of the sills, and thus all surface water is effectually
turned away.
[Illustration: FIG. 2—The shape of the roof influences the
cost.]
[Illustration: FIG. 3—Each of these houses require the same
material.]
_In building a hen-house_ the working unit is the floor and air
space required for each hen. A safe working rule is about five to six
square feet of floor space, and about eight to ten cubic feet of air
space for every fowl. Foundation walls should be built deep enough to
prevent heaving by the frost and high enough to prevent surface water
from entering. Where large stones are scarce sometimes grout walls may
be made with gravel or small stones and cement; or the building may
be set upon posts set well into the ground, in which case hemlock or
hard wood boards should be securely nailed to bottom half of sills and
extend down to natural ground level, to exclude rats.
_Dampness is fatal to hens_; build or drain so as to secure
dryness. It is better by far to have a cold, dry house than a warm,
damp house. The warmer the air the more moisture it will hold; when
this moist air comes in contact with a cold surface condensation takes
place, which is often converted into hoar-frost. The remedy is to
remove the moisture as far as possible, by first cutting off the water
from below which comes up from the soil. The water table is the same
under a hen-house as it is outdoors; dirt floors, therefore, are liable
to be damp. Stone filling covered with soil is sometimes difficult to
keep clean and may only partially keep out dampness. Board floors are
short lived if the air is not allowed to circulate under them, and
in a cold climate a free circulation of air under the floors makes
them very cold; in either case they are likely to harbor rats. A good
cement floor is nearly as cheap as a good matched-board floor, counting
lumber, sleepers, nails, time, etc. When once properly made it is good
for all time. It is practically rat-proof, easily cleaned and perfectly
dry, cutting off absolutely all the water from below. If covered with a
little soil, or straw, or both, as all floors should be, it will be a
warm floor.
_A low house is easier warmed than a high one._ Solid walls
radiate heat rapidly. The best way to make a poultry house warm is to
build it as low as possible without danger of bumping heads. There
will then be ample air-space for as many fowls as the floor space will
accommodate. Too much air-space makes a house cold; it cannot be warmed
by the heat given off by the fowls.
_Sunlight is a necessity to fowls_; it carries warmth and good
cheer, and tends to arrest or prevent disease. Too much glass makes
a house too cold at night and too warm in the daytime, because glass
gives off heat at night as readily as it collects it in the daytime.
Much glass makes construction expensive; allow one square foot glass
surface to about sixteen square feet floor space, if the windows are
properly placed. The windows should be high, and placed up and down,
not horizontally and low (Fig. 4). In the former the sunlight passes
over the entire floor during the day, from west to east, drying and
purifying practically the whole interior. The time sunshine is most
needed is when the sun is lowest, from September 21 to March 21. The
lines in Fig. 4 represent the extreme points which the sunshine reaches
during this period, with the top of a four-foot window placed four
feet, six feet, and seven feet high, respectively. With the highest
point of the window at four feet, the direct sun’s rays would never
reach farther back than nine feet; at six feet it would shine thirteen
and one-half feet back, and at seven feet it would strike the back side
of the house one foot above the floor.
[Illustration: FIG. 4—Showing extent of sun’s rays.]
_Make the yards long and narrow_ (Fig. 5). Double yards are
desirable where space can be given for them; they allow a rotation of
green crops, which cleanses and sweetens the ground, and converts the
excrement which would become a source of danger into a valuable food
crop. The shape of the fields, the slope of the land, and the location
of other farm buildings will have much to do with the shape of the yards
and mode of access to the poultry buildings. Generally the yards should
be long and narrow, so as to make cultivation easy. Two rods wide and
eight rods long is a good size yard for forty or fifty hens, although
more room would be better. This size permits a row of fruit trees in
the center for shade, which is a necessity.
Much of the dampness in poultry houses in winter is due to the
condensation of the breath of the fowls. The warm air exhaled from the
lungs is heavily charged with moisture, and this, coming in contact
with the cold roof and walls, is condensed into hoar-frost, which melts
and drops to the floor when the house is warmed up by the sun. In
recent years considerable success has attended efforts made to prevent
this moisture by ventilating the pens through muslin curtains set into
the tops of doors, or forming a part of the front wall (see plans of
Dr. Bricault’s poultry house, page 12, and of the Maine Experiment
Station House, page 18), also by setting the curtains into part of the
window spaces. In Fig. 6 is given an illustration of an experiment
tried on the Lone Oak Poultry Farm, Reading, Mass., in the winters of
1904-6. Being much annoyed by the moisture which collected on the roof
and walls in the night and, melting, dropped to the floor when the
sun warmed the roof and walls during the day, frames the size of one
fourth of each window were made and common muslin tacked on. To better
ascertain the effect of the curtains the windows in house No. 1 were
left closed, as formerly; in house No. 2 the top sash was dropped the
length of one light and a curtain set into the space; in house No.
3 the windows were dropped from the top and raised from the bottom,
curtains being set into both spaces. In house No. 1 the dampness and
“chill” remained as before; in house No. 2 there was some improvement;
in house No. 3 there was a great improvement, and the temperature,
in the coldest days of the winter, was about six degrees warmer in
house No. 3 than in house No. 1 where the windows were all kept closed
tight. The two curtains, making half the space of each window, were not
quite sufficient to dry out the moisture, which had already got well
established, but by installing the curtains both top and bottom as soon
as the weather dropped below freezing the next fall, they were found to
be ample to keep the pens well ventilated and quite dry.
[Illustration: FIG. 5—Make the yards long and narrow.]
[Illustration: FIG. 6—An experiment with curtains in the windows.]
Secure shelter and warmth by building in the lee of a windbreak or a
hill, or of other farm buildings. Buildings that face the south, or
about two points east of south, will get the largest amount of exposure
to the sun’s rays and protection from the cold northwest and west winds
of winter; other things being equal they will be warmer, dryer, and
more cheerful. An eastern exposure is usually preferable to a western
exposure, barring prevailing winds being from the east; because, like
flowers, hens prefer morning to afternoon sun.
The shape of the roof of a poultry house greatly influences the cost,
and, generally speaking, the preference should be for houses with
single-span (or “shed”) roofs. See Figs. 2 and 3. These houses are the
easiest and cheapest to build, they give the much-desired vertical
front, with room for the windows to be placed high to distribute the
winter sunshine (Fig. 4), and with the drip of the roof all carried off
to the north the ground in front of the house is dry. It also is cooler
in summer, as it is not exposed to the direct rays of the sun, and is
warmer in winter because it gets the direct rays of the sun.
[Illustration: FIG. 7—An implement house adapted for poultry.]
Not infrequently there are small buildings on the place which can be
easily and economically adapted to poultry use; as, for example, an old
implement house, or grain house, or tool shed, which can be altered
into a one or two pen-house, as desired, by arranging windows and doors
and adding one or two open-front scratching-sheds for exercise and
fresh air (Figs. 7 and 10). In case there is no building suitable for
remodelling into a poultry house an inexpensive lean-to may be built
onto the south end of the stable (Fig. 9). A house of this kind can
be simply, economically, and conveniently built, and well supplies
the conditions for successful poultry keeping; we recently visited a
dairy and poultry farm in Connecticut where house room for one hundred
and fifty head of laying-breeding stock had been built in the lee of
and annexed to the dairy barns and sheds. A good prepared roofing,
such as “Paroid,” makes quite shallow and low lean-to roofs easy of
construction, both air and water-tight, and very durable.
Sometimes a dweller in the suburbs, or one living on a small, rented
place, wants to keep a flock of fifteen or twenty head of fowls, to
supply the family with fresh-laid eggs during the fall, winter, and
spring, and then fresh poultry meat for the table; these are all
disposed of before the family goes away to the country or seashore for
the summer, and another flock of well-matured pullets is bought in the
fall. For such purpose the small portable house shown in Fig. 12, or
one of the several patterns of “colony-houses” given herein, will serve
excellently; all of these colony-houses are portable. A good size of
house of this kind is ten feet long by seven feet wide, six feet high
in front and four feet six inches high at the back; or for a flock of
eight or ten fowls eight feet long by five or six feet wide will answer
well. Houses of this type are built of a size to suit the builder, and
they can be easily moved to a new location at any time.
Excellent patterns of small poultry houses, well adapted to the
suburban lot or for moving out into the orchard on a farm, are shown on
pages 8 and 9; these “colony” houses have proved their merits in many
different localities. They are especially valuable on a farm, where it
is desired to locate a flock of half-grown chicks out in the stubble of
a newly-cut grain field, or colonies of chicks along the border of a
cornfield, or on a poultry farm where extra room is needed for surplus
stock and cockerels which are to be sold for breeding purposes. A solid
board floor enables shutting the birds in at night and keeping them in
until the team has drawn them to the new location in the morning; it
also secures the birds against marauding animals at night, if the slide
door has been closed. For convenience of drawing to a new location it
is best to have them mounted on low runners.
[Illustration: FIG. 8—Ground Plan.]
An excellent plan of colony-house is given in Figs. 14 and 15, and
comes from the Connecticut Experiment Station; this combines the
advantages of the curtained-front scratching-shed with that of the
small colony-house. This house is sixteen feet long by six feet wide,
is six feet high in front and four feet high at the rear; the roosting
apartment being 7 × 6 feet and the scratching-shed 9 × 6 feet in size.
A muslin curtain 4 × 8 feet, tacked to a light frame which is hinged
to the top of open space, closes the front on cold nights and is kept
closed in stormy weather.
On page 17 we show a type of colony-house which is well adapted for a
portable brooder house, an “in-door” brooder being placed in each end
and fifty to seventy-five chicks being put in each brooder. When the
chicks are large enough to do without artificial warmth the brooders
are removed, the chicks being left till such time as it is well to
separate the sexes, when the cockerels can be removed and the pullets
left to grow to laying maturity. On page 42 we show an illustration of
thirty of this pattern of colony brooder house in use on the “Gowell
Poultry Farm,” Orono, Maine; a few over four thousand chickens were
put into these thirty portable houses in the spring of 1905, nineteen
hundred and eighty-five cockerels were sold off as broilers, some
sixty more raised for breeding males, and a few over two thousand
mature pullets taken from them in October and moved into the 400 feet
long poultry house which had been erected during the summer. When the
pullets were occupying them, in midsummer, they were turned about to
face north and lifted up to about a foot and a half height above the
ground by stones about a foot in height being put under the ends of the
runners; this gave the pullets the much-needed shade of both the inside
and underneath the house, a simple device, but decidedly helpful.
In Fig. 11 we show a type of colony-house such as used on the large
colony poultry farms about Tiverton and Little Compton, R. I. These are
usually about ten by sixteen feet in size, six feet high to the eaves
when built with double-pitch roof, seven feet high in front and five
feet at back when shed roof. These houses are very simple in plan and
construction, there being three roost-poles about three feet above the
ground at the back, five or six nest boxes, food trough, water dish
and hopper for shells and grit. The houses hold about forty fowls, are
placed about a hundred and fifty to two hundred feet apart in locations
convenient to drive to with the feed and water-wagon, and on some of
the large farms as many as fifty to a hundred of these colony-houses
may be seen. The capital needed to equip a colony farm of this kind is
very much less than where long houses and yards are erected; the labor
charge of caring for the flocks is very much greater, however, so that
what is saved in capital is expended in labor.
[Illustration: FIG. 9—A lean-to poultry house.]
[Illustration: FIG. 10—Implement house with scratching-shed attached.]
Poultry farmers in America have generally preferred the
continuous-house plan of keeping fowls, and the resulting poisoned
ground of the yards has no doubt been the cause of many a failure in
the poultry business. An eminent English lecturer is authority for the
statement that the portable-house plan has been the saving of the
poultry business in England, and bringing the small (portable) houses
together near the other small buildings in winter, then moving them to
convenient locations out in the fields in the spring, has solved the
difficulty of extensive poultry farming over there. It would be well to
carefully consider these points while taking up the continuous-house
plans which we give in following pages.
An objection to the scattered “colony-house” plan, as seen on the large
poultry farms in Tiverton and Little Compton, R. I., has been the great
labor of feeding two or three times a day—one of the feeds being a
cooked mash. By adopting the modern method of feeding the food dry and
keeping a supply of food constantly before the fowls a considerable
saving in labor is effected, and it is practicable to successfully
keep a large number with but one visit a day to the several flocks;
this would be an afternoon visit, for rinsing and refilling the
water fountains and collecting the eggs. By having the food-hoppers
sufficiently capacious to hold a supply of food for a week but one
visit a week would be made for filling them.
This is the method adopted on the Vernon Fruit and Poultry Farm,
Vernon, Conn., where some three thousand head of layers are kept, the
food-hoppers being refilled once a week; as there is a little brook and
numerous springs convenient to the houses no watering whatever is done,
each flock of fowls having but fifty to two hundred feet to journey to
find an abundant supply of running water.
[Illustration: FIG. 11—Type of house on Rhode Island colony poultry
farms.]
On the Gowell Poultry Farm, Orono, Maine, there is an excellent
example of the continuous-house, and by the partial adoption of the
dry-feeding method the labor is so far reduced that one man can do all
the work of feeding and caring for two thousand head of layers, kept in
a house four hundred feet long by twenty feet wide, which is divided
into pens twenty feet square and one hundred birds kept in each. The
double-yard system is in use here, there being one tier of yards one
hundred feet long by twenty feet wide extending south from the house,
and another tier of yards the same size north of the house; when the
south-yards have been denuded of green food the birds are turned into
those north of the house, and the south-yards are plowed and sown (or
planted) to a quick-maturing crop. By this method poisoned ground
is avoided and the conveniences of the continuous-house retained;
the safety of such a plant would lie, of course, in the intelligent
handling of the work. It is worthy of note that on the Gowell Farm
the portable colony-house method is in use in growing the young stock
(see page 42), while the continuous-house method is used with the
laying-breeding stock. This is true of practically all of the large
poultry farms, it being conceded that free range over farm-fields, or
through orchard and woodland, promotes good growth in the young stock.
When, however, it is desired to develop the physical energies towards
egg-production the semi-confinement of houses and yards is brought into
play; in this manner the greatest egg-yield, and consequent profit is
obtained.
Here are three different methods of avoiding the evil of
ground-poisoning: First, the continuous-house with double-yard system,
one set of yards being used while the other is being sweetened by a
growing crop; second, the colony-house plan with houses located a
hundred and fifty to two hundred feet apart and convenient to drive
to for feeding and watering; third, the “portable-house” plan, which
is the colony method with the houses changed from one location to
another, and brought together near the group of farm buildings for the
winter months. Convenience, amount of capital available, and other
considerations, will influence the choice of a method.
[Illustration: FIG. 12—A small “portable” poultry house.]
In Fig. 14 we give an illustration of an elevated poultry house used in
Florida, which was published in the “Poultry Standard,” of Stamford,
Conn., and described as made of Neponset Red Rope Roofing, both top
and sides; a better construction would be Paroid Roofing for roof and
sides, or Paroid for roof and Neponset Red Rope Roofing for the ends
and sides. This house is built upon posts set in the ground at the back
and six feet high in front; the six posts, three front and three back,
are all the frame required. The light furring to sustain the roof and
sides is nailed to the posts, and the roofing securely nailed to the
strips of furring.
The open space below the house is enclosed by one-inch mesh wire
netting; there is no floor, and a narrow platform along the rear,
inside, gives the hens access to the nest boxes, which are hinged at
one end, and swing out as shown in the drawing. The roost-poles should
be a foot above the open bottom, to be quite sheltered from winds.
Of similar pattern is the “Mushroom Poultry House,” from Southern
California. These houses may be built any size, but are usually made
four or five feet square. They set up from the ground about eighteen
inches, and the closed sides are three feet, the posts being four and
one half above the ground. There is no floor used, the air circulating
freely beneath. When built of boards no frame is needed, the boarding
being nailed to the posts. The roof goes up from all four sides, in
pyramid form, and is made water-tight. The roosts are placed about
fifteen or eighteen inches above the bottom, as shown by the dotted
lines, and a walk or ladder is provided which leads from the ground to
the rear roost. This is made movable, so that it can be taken down at
night, thus protecting the fowls from marauding animals.
[Illustration: FIG. 13—A California “Mushroom” poultry house.]
[Illustration: FIG. 14—A Florida poultry house.]
Some of the houses are built of iron advertising signs, and have the
common double-pitch roof; in some cases the sides are made of burlap
tacked on to furring, which is nailed to the posts. This burlap is
then painted with crude oil, distillate, and Venetian red, to make it
wind-proof. Lumber is very expensive in that section, and the burlap,
when water-proofed, makes a cheap and quite desirable house.
A much better wind and water-tight construction would be Paroid for the
roof, and Paroid or Neponset Red Rope Roofing for the sides.