As has already been emphasized, the way to get money out of the
chicken business is not to put so much in.
Land, however, well suited to the purpose, should not be begrudged,
for interest at six per cent, will afford a very considerable extra
investment in land well suited to the business if it in any way cuts
down the cost of operation.
The Plan of Housing.
The houses are the next consideration. On most poultry farms they
are the chief items of expense. I know of a poultry farm near New
York City where the house cost $12.00 per hen. The owner built this
farm with a view of making money. People also buy stock in Nevada
gold mines with a view of making money. I know another poultry farm
owned by a man named Tillinghast at Vernon, Connecticut, where the
houses cost thirty cents per hen. Mr. Tillinghast gets more eggs per
hen than the New York man. Incidentally, he is sending his son to
Yale, and he has no other visible means of support except his
chicken farm.
For the region of light soils and the localities which I have
recommended for poultry farming, the following style of poultry
house should be used:
No floors, single boarded walls, a roof of matched cypress lumber or
of cheap pine covered with tarred paper. This house is to have no
windows and no door. The roosts are in the back end; the front end
is open or partly open; feed hoppers and nests are in the front end.
The feed hoppers may be made in the walls, made loose to set in the
house, or made to shed water and placed outside the house. All
watering is to be done outside the houses; likewise any feeding
beyond that done in hoppers.
The exact style of the house I leave to the reader's own plan. Were
I recommending complex houses costing several dollars per hen, this
certainly would be leaving the reader in the dark woods. With houses
of the kind described it is hard to go far amiss. The simplest form
is a double pitched roof, the ridge-pole standing about seven feet
high, and the walls about four. The house is made eight by sixteen,
and one end--not the side--left open. For the house that man is to
enter, this form cannot be improved upon.
The only other points are to construct it on a couple of 4x4 runners
so that it can be dragged about by a team. Cypress, or other
decay-proof wood should be used for these mud-sills. The framing
should be light and as little of it used as is consistent with
firmness. If the whole house costs more than twenty-five dollars
there is something wrong in its planning.
This house should accommodate seventy-five or eighty hens.
For smaller operations, especially for horseless, or intensive
farming, a low, light house may be used, which the attendant never
enters. A portion of the roof lifts up to fill feed-hoppers, gather
eggs or spray. These small houses may be made light enough to be
moved short distances by a pry-pole, the team being required only
when they are moved to a new field.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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