Author Description

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1904 Excerpt:...We would build such a house with a shed roof, the front seven feet high and the back five and one-half feet high. In describing this house Professor Gowell says: "The roost platform is three feet above the floor and is three feet two inches wide (clear). This width gives sufficient room so the back wall and front curtain are not soiled by the discharges from the birds while on the roosts. I do not like to have the platform nearer the floor than three feet. If the space is three feet high it is light and clear and is really a part of the room; if but two feet high it is only a hole into which the hens can go, to be sure--and a man has to crawl in search of the eggs sometimes laid there. It is dark, and you have to make excuses (?) to yourself about it every time you go into it. Don't make it less than three feet for me! The roosting-room is three feet two inches wide in the clear (from wall to curtain), and averages three feet high from the platform below the roosts to the roof above. The house is clean, light, plain and inexpensive, and with so much open front it gives room for a large number of birds on small floor space. "The walls and roof about the roosting-room must be double, must be tight and well packed, and the curtain must fit very close to prevent currents of air. Don't put in any ventilators! When the curtains are first shut down, on the first cold night, they are not allowed open another night until cold, freezing nights are over, unless we have a long winter thaw, in which case we use our judgment about leaving curtain open." The curtain for front of roosting-pen is 3 x 16 feet, and there is a "broody" coop (in which to imprison broody birds) at the left end four feet long. It is essential that the broody birds have a...