[Illustration: FIG. 24—The straw-loft poultry house.]
In New York state, especially, the Single Combed White Leghorns have
long been the preferred variety, and, as they have rather thin single
combs, which are considered to be susceptible to frost in cold weather,
it has been a problem to house them so that they shall be protected
from freezing. Many different types of houses have been tried, some of
them with a stove in one end and a long pipe running through to the
chimney at the other, thirty or forty feet away; a decided disadvantage
with this was the having to keep the house shut quite tight to conserve
the heat, and the consequent dampness from the moisture of the breath
of the birds.
To get over this difficulty diffused ventilation was devised by Mr. H.
J. Blanchard, of Fairview Farm, Groton, N. Y.; this ventilation was
obtained by stowing straw (or swale hay) in the loft in the gable, and
this permits a slow diffusion of air upward through the cracks of the
floor and out of the small doors in each end of gable. This straw-loft
poultry house has been widely adopted all over the United States; a
good example of a long house of this type is shown in the illustration
on page 12.
[Illustration: FIG. 25—Ground plan.]
Mr. Blanchard’s houses are forty feet long by sixteen feet wide, and
divided into two pens twenty by sixteen feet each; about fifty birds
are wintered in each pen. The walls of the house are made double,
boarded on both sides of the studs with a dead air space between; in
some cases the walls are packed with saw dust or planer shavings, at
the well-known Van Dresser farm, in Cobleskill, N.Y., they are packed
with straw. The floor is double boarded, with a good sheathing paper
between. Overhead, on the plates, two by six inch stringers are laid,
and a loose floor of rough boards, with inch to inch and a half cracks
between, is laid. A one-third pitch roof is laid on shingle laths nailed
to the rafters six inches apart, and on this a good sheathing paper
covered with two-ply Paroid. In each gable a door is cut, as large as
will swing under the roof. On the attic floor is put some twelve to
fifteen inches of loose straw.
In very cold weather, when the house is tightly closed save for a
muslin curtain in one or two windows of each pen, the vapor thrown
off in the breath of the fowls will pass up through the cracks in
the loft-floor and be absorbed in the straw above, instead of being
condensed on the walls and roof in the form of frost. On mild days in
winter the doors in the gable may be opened wide, or if it is very
windy the door in the leeward end may be opened, which permits the
air to draw through over the straw, drying it thoroughly, without any
draughts upon the birds on the floor below.
In warm weather the gable doors may be left open night and day, and
the draught through the loft, together with the ventilation through
open doors and windows in the house below, keeps the birds cool and
comfortable. These houses are thoroughly practical in every way and
will be found very desirable for use on any large farm. A few such
scattered in convenient localities will give good opportunity to rotate
crops and poultry, and so gain a two-fold profit from the land and
at the same time avoid all danger of the soil becoming poisoned by
accumulation of the droppings. At Fairview Farm Mr. Blanchard combines
fruit growing with poultry keeping, a combination which it would be
difficult to better for double profits, and a combination which should
be better understood by poultry growers. The advantages of combining
fruit and poultry growing are many, not the least of the advantages
being furnishing the shade which Prof. Rice tells us is so essential in
summer. For the permanent yards there is nothing to equal apple trees,
but as they are of somewhat slow growth and need large space when full
grown, it is well to set apple trees about forty feet apart and set
plums or peaches (or both) in the spaces between; the plum and peach
trees will mature, produce a few crops of fruit and break down, before
the apple trees will have grown to a stature to require all the room. A
few years ago plum trees were strongly recommended for poultry yards,
but experience has demonstrated that they cannot be depended upon for
but a half dozen years or so, hence the wisdom of setting apple trees
for permanent shade.
[Illustration: FIG. 26—West Virginia Experiment Station Colony-house.]
Plantations of small fruits, such as grapes, blackberries, and
raspberries, serve admirably for range and semi-shade for growing
chicks, and it is a mistake to imagine that the chicks damage the
crops of fruit; if they touch any it will only be the lower (and
always inferior) stems that they reach. There are such substantial
benefits accruing from the presence of little chicks about the small
fruit plantations, or the mature birds about the apple, plum, and
peach trees—such as the destruction of hosts of worms and insects and
keeping the surface of the ground stirred, that every consideration
urges the combination of fruit and poultry growing. At the Vernon Fruit
and Poultry Farm, Vernon, Conn., we saw last summer Baldwin apple
trees that were six inches through at the butt, yielded an average of
a barrel of choice apples each in the fall, and had been set only six
years. They began bearing the second year after setting, had borne
increasing crops every year, last season averaged to be about six
inches through and gave their owner a barrel of apples each. These
apple trees were part of an orchard which was occupied by colony
poultry houses having fifty layers each, and set sufficient distance
apart so that there were about two hundred birds to the acre; the owner
told us he had never seen a borer or any evidence of borers about those
trees.
[Illustration: FIG. 27—Colony poultry house at Connecticut Experiment
Station.]
[Illustration: FIG. 28—Ground plan.]