[Illustration: FIG. 29—The curtain-front,
curtained roosting-closet, poultry house. Maine Experiment Station.]
As stated elsewhere, the tendency in poultry house construction today
is to more and more open up the houses to fresh air and sunshine,
and the most advanced type of the fresh air poultry house has been
developed at the Maine Experiment Station, Orono, Maine. This consists
of a house-front about half open, a little more than a fourth of each
pen-front being closed by a cloth curtain only, two windows and a door
making with the curtain about half of the whole front of each pen.
At the rear of each pen, and elevated three feet above the pen-floor,
is a curtained-front “roosting closet,” as it is called; this roosting
closet is the “bed-room” and the whole pen the “living-room,” in this
type of house.
[Illustration: FIG. 30—Cross-section.]
It seems almost like cruelty to animals to put hens in such houses,
where they have but the two cloth curtains between them and all
outdoors in the very cold winters they have up in central Maine; the
Maine Station is very nearly up to forty-five north latitude, about the
same as Ottawa, Ontario, St. Paul, Minn., and Portland, Oregon. One of
the Station bulletins, however, says: “These curtain-front houses have
all proved eminently satisfactory. Not a case of cold or snuffles has
developed from sleeping in the warm elevated closets with the cloth
fronts, and then going down into the cold room, onto the dry straw,
and spending the day in the open air. The egg-yield per bird has been
as good in these houses as in the warmed one.” In a letter written by
Prof. Gowell, just after an extremely cold period, he says: “This is
the ninth day of weather all the way from zero to twenty-five degrees
below, still the fifty pullets in the ten by twenty-five feet curtained
front house with its curtained-front roosting-room have fallen off but
little in their egg-yield, and both the house and scratching material
on the floor are perfectly dry. There is no white frost on the walls
and there will be no dampness when the weather moderates and a thaw
comes.” There could hardly be a stronger indorsement of fresh, pure air
in a poultry house and good ventilation without draughts. If such good
results can be attained in cold Maine they can be attained anywhere in
the United States and southern Canada.
[Illustration: FIG. 31—Maine Station Colony Brooder House.]
The Maine Experiment Station has now three of these curtain-front
houses, of which one is one hundred and forty feet long by twelve
feet wide, divided into pens twenty by twelve feet in size, in each
pen being housed fifty birds; the other is one hundred and twenty by
sixteen feet, divided into pens thirty by sixteen feet, and one hundred
hens are kept in each. On Prof. Gowell’s farm, two miles distant from
the Station, he erected last year a house of this type four hundred
feet long by twenty feet wide, divided into pens twenty by twenty
feet each, and a hundred birds are kept in each pen; in the thirty
by sixteen feet pens there is a floor space of four and eight-tenths
feet per bird; in the twenty by twenty feet pens the floor space is
four feet per bird. It is of interest to note that the one hundred
birds, Barred Plymouth Rocks, penned on this four hundred square feet
of floor space, do not go outdoors from the time they are put in
the house in October till the ground of the yards is well dried off
in spring, say about May first; this suggests the practicability of
housing laying-stock in suitable convenient buildings in winter, pains
being taken that ample sunshine and fresh air (through curtains) be
supplied, and in the spring the birds be moved out to portable colony
houses scattered about the orchard, or a wood-lot, or other convenient
place, where they would be pushed for a liberal egg-yield through the
summer and sold off to market before molting time in the fall. This
plan supposes the rearing of another generation of pullets for layers
during the summer, and these pullets go into the winter-laying-pens
in October, to be removed to the colony-houses in May, to be in turn,
sold off to market in September. This plan of an annual rotation
of laying-stock will undoubtedly give the best financial returns
from egg-farming, and as by the adoption of the dry-feeding method
of handling the fowls the labor is reduced to the minimum, the
results, with intelligent management of the business should be quite
satisfactory; the profits will be liberal for amount of capital
invested and labor engaged.
In Fig. 29 we give a single pen of the one hundred and twenty feet long
house, with a door opening into each pen from the board-walk along the
front. Each pen has two windows, which light the interior when the
weather is stormy and it is necessary to keep the curtain closed; the
curtain is open every day when the weather is fair. There are banks of
nest boxes at each end of pens, and coops for breaking up broody birds
above the nest boxes. The twelve by four feet curtain in the pen-front
is hinged at top so it may be swung up against the roof and hooked
up there; the roosting closet is up three feet from the floor, the
platform is three feet wide, and the curtain which closes the front is
the whole length of the pen, and also swings up against the roof, where
hooks secure it up out of the way. The whole floor of the pen is open
for exercise, and is an enclosed out-of-doors pen all the time.