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Show HEALTHY YARD FOR PG'JLTRY Essential Features in Keeping Chick-,, Chick-,, ens Are Cl-nrt GV.ir.rters, Crass and cxerci&c. 'Tlie essential features in poultry keepine "re cle"n I"111"10''-- S"iss :nul exerdse; coops that are easy to clean, easy to feed" and not expensive to make. After many years of etmly and experiment with nil the different kinds of poultry houses I find the following fol-lowing plan is the simplest and by far the best, except in the snowy period pe-riod of winter, when the birds and yards can be placed in an open shed facing south. The yards are built in sections four feed wide, two feet high and 16 feet long. One or 20 sections can be placed end to end and the length of the yard is only limited by your boundary or whatever else there is to restrict you. A grass and clover field is the best, but when I started my yards they were on corn stubble and a line grassy yard has grown without seeding seed-ing in two years, writes R. Thomas In Rural New Yorker. The materials are kept in all lumber yards. Six arbor laths 1x2x16 white pine finished and free from knots and other wer.k Bpots, cost about 25 cents each, will make the frame. The sides, ends and top can be made up of plaster laths nailed one inch apart for small chickens chick-ens and to 2 inches for adult fowls. Porch lattice strips i re nearer, better and a little more expensive, but if painted would make a neater appearance and be more lasting. The end section should be closed at the ends with a sliding door to shut all birds In when moving yards; Intermediate Inter-mediate sections are braced on the ends and left open otherwise. The top of each section should have four feet closed with light lumber or a sheet of galvanized Iron which will furnish shade for the fowls on warm days. For broder yards these sections should have the whole top covered with galvanized iron or light lumber and It will save much loss from sudden sud-den showers, but make them light enough to move easily. The roosting Cheap Poultry Yard. room should be four feet square and two feet high with two roosts and open at the top like a box. These coops are easy to move by just dragging drag-ging them along. They will hold 12 or 14 Leghorns and have roosting coops enough to accommodate your flock. Laying houses are the same size with four nests on each side opened at the top. These houses should be closed at the evening feeding feed-ing time to stop birds from roosting in the house or nests. Dry mash hoppers hop-pers are kept in another house of the same pattern and each house should have one or more sections between them. . These yards make ideal Leghorn yards (they are always in their own place and not scratching at your neighbor's garden), which is their greatest recommendation. I am a trucker and my neighbor's chickens do me more harm than all the bugs. Each morning a little grain is thrown in the end section, and when all the birds are in close the side and then move each section over sideways till all are on the clean grass, then move the end section, birds and all, taking care not to pinch their toes, but they are usually too eager for the new grass to get their toes pinched. Roosting houseB should have-no bottom. bot-tom. Laying houses have only wire netting on bottom of the nests tc keep in the straw when moving the house. The dry mash feeding Jiouse should have a wood floor. Water, grit, shells and charcoal can be kept in tomato cans or lard pails on the outside of the yards where the birds can reach them easily by putting their heads through the slatted sides of the yards," and the feeder can see at a glance if each pall is full. The water, grit, etc., will always be free from droppings, which is never the case when these utensils are kept inside a poultry house. The ground will have grown up to grass in about two weeks' time when you can move the yards back to their original place and move over daily, a task that -will but take about two minutes per section at the most. Every two years the plot should be plowed and used for a garden and a new piece seeded to blue grass and white clover the year previous to being be-ing used as a poultry plot. There will be no waste of fertilizer in those droppings on the living sod. In the cut details of this plan are shown. |