Our Domestic Birds: Elementary Lessons in Aviculture

by John H. Robinson

Large Stocks on General Farms

When farmers in America began to keep larger stocks of fowls, the most common practice nearly everywhere was to increase the general flock until there were far too many fowls on the land that they would usually forage over. Under such conditions fowls on the farm were not profitable. They damaged every crop to which they had access, and made the farm most unsightly in the vicinity of the dwelling house. Then some farmers would reduce the flock and return to the old practice of keeping only a few dozen hens, while others would adopt the city plan of building houses with many compartments and keeping the fowls yarded in small flocks. This plan was usually abandoned within a few years, because, while it worked very well in the winter, when the farmer had time to give the hens extra care, they were not as well off in the summer, when the farmer had to give attention to his field crops first. Such was the usual course of development of farm methods of managing fowls.

Fig. 98. Stone poultry house about two hundred years old, on farm of F. W. C. Almy, Tiverton Four Corners, Rhode Island

Fig. 99. Rhode Island colony poultry house for thirty-five fowls

Fig. 100. Colony poultry houses on Rhode Island farm

The colony system. But occasionally a farmer whose flock had outgrown its accommodations as one flock would divide it, moving a part to another place on the farm, and so was able to maintain the increase in numbers without adopting laborious methods. This idea was carried out most systematically and most extensively in the vicinity of Little Compton, Rhode Island, where the Rhode Island Red fowl originated. The first settlers in this part of Rhode Island built large stone poultry houses like that shown in Fig. [98]. Some of these old buildings are still used for poultry. This district is most favorably situated for poultry keeping. The snow rarely lies long, and the birds can be outdoors nearly every day in winter as well as in summer. Being near the fashionable summer resort of Newport, the farmers here early found a large demand for their eggs and poultry at high prices in the summer time, when in many places the prices were low. Then in the winter they could send eggs to Boston and Providence, which were the best markets in the country for this class of produce. So these farmers had every inducement to devise a practical method of indefinitely increasing their stocks of fowls. The plan which they adopted was very simple. Small houses, which could easily be moved from place to place with a two-horse team, and which would accommodate from twenty-five to thirty-five fowls, were made and distributed over the farm. Sometimes these houses were placed in pastures not suitable for mowing or for cultivation and remained there permanently, but as a rule they were moved from time to time to suit the rotation of crops on the farm. As the number of these houses on a farm increased, and they were spread over a larger area and sometimes placed in fields and pastures a long distance from the farmhouse, the work of caring for the fowls, even by the simple method used, became too heavy to be done by man power alone, and a horse and cart was used in carrying food and water, collecting eggs, and moving chicks and fowls from one part of the farm to another. Thus the work was put on a very economical basis, and keeping fowls by this method became a common feature of the farming of this section of Rhode Island. The methods used here have changed little, if at all, since the system was started sixty or seventy years ago. The system is so primitive that people who are familiar with more elaborate methods often imagine that the Rhode Island farmer, who does so well by his simple methods, would certainly do very much better if he applied more of the modern ideas. But the test of time has demonstrated that this simple colony system is easily made permanent, while most of the more ambitious and complex systems either fail utterly or have but a transient success.

Fig. 101. Collecting eggs on Rhode Island farm. The little girl is in the box in which dough is carried in the morning

Numbers of hens kept. The number of hens kept on a farm in this section varies from four or five hundred to over two thousand. Stocks of from eight hundred to twelve hundred are most common. The principal object is to produce market eggs, but as the two-year-old hens and the cockerels that are not needed for breeding purposes are sold every year, the receipts from the sale of live poultry are sometimes considerable.

Fig. 102. Colony houses at Michigan Agricultural College. (Photograph from the college)

Feeding, care, and results. The hens, being well distributed over the farm, pick a large part of their living. Hard grain (usually cracked corn) is kept always before them in the house, in hoppers which will hold a bag of grain each. Once a day, in the morning, the hens are given a feed of mash (or, as it is called in this locality, dough) of about the same composition as the mash described on page [89]. The dough is cooked in a large iron set-kettle in the evening and left there until it is to be fed the next morning. Then it is loaded into boxes or large tubs on a cart. The cart also carries a barrel of water. As he reaches each house the driver, with a shovel, throws what dough the hens need on the grass near the house. Then he fills the water pail and drives on to the next house. The hens require no more attention until evening, when the man collects the eggs and gives more water where it is necessary.

Fig. 103. Moving one of the houses in Fig. [102]

Fig. 104. Colony houses at Iowa Agricultural College. (Photograph from the college)

Some of the smaller stocks of fowls on these farms—flocks that have been selected with care and are given a little more attention than is usual—give an average annual production of eleven or twelve dozen eggs a hen, but the general average is only eight or nine dozen. Although the profit per hen is small, the compensation for labor and investment is better than on most poultry plants where a much greater product per hen is secured. Even when eggs are the most important money crop on the farm, the care of the laying hens is but a small part of the day's work of the man who looks after them.

Fig. 105. Colony houses at Hampton Institute

How the chickens are grown. The number of chickens reared each year on one of these colony farms is usually about equal to the number of fowls kept. Where there are so many hens of a sitting variety, and very early hatching is not practiced, there is rarely any shortage of sitting hens at the time when they are wanted. Usually twenty or thirty hens are set at the same time, and it is expected that they will hatch eight or ten chickens each. Sometimes sixty or seventy hens are set at one time. As it is almost always quite warm when the chickens are hatched, it is customary to give each hen twenty or more chickens. The coops are placed in rows, several rods apart each way, on a piece of grassland that has had no poultry on it for a year or more. Most of the farmers are very particular on this point, and prefer to put the young chickens on land on which there has been no poultry for at least two years. They have learned by experience that under such conditions they can rear a much larger percentage of the chickens hatched, and that the chickens will grow more evenly and mature earlier. In planning the field crops grown on the farm they always try to arrange so that the small chickens may have fresh land not too far from the farmhouse; land seeded to grass the year before is best.

The chickens are fed the same dough as is given to the hens, but are fed oftener. They have a second meal of dough about noon, and their grain supply, which is given in small troughs, is replenished frequently. While the hens are with the chickens the food is placed where the hen confined to the coop can get her share. After the hens are taken away, the dough is thrown on the grass as the cart passes up and down the rows of coops.

Fig. 106. Coop for hen and chicks, used on Rhode Island farm

When the hay has been harvested and the corn has grown tall, a part of the young chickens may be removed from the land where they were started, and the coops placed where they can forage on mowing lands, in cornfields, and wherever they can go without damage to a growing crop. As they become too crowded in the small coops, the cockerels are sold and, if there are still too many birds in a coop, a few pullets are taken from each of the overcrowded coops and new colonies are started, so far from their old associates that they will not find their way back.

Fig. 107. Colony house for growing chicks, at Macdonald College. (Photograph from the college)

In the early fall as many of the oldest hens are sold as is necessary to vacate the houses needed for the pullets reared that season. Then the houses are thoroughly cleaned. (They may not have been cleaned before for six months or a year.) If a house is to be moved to a new location, the change is usually made at this time. One or two cartloads of clean sand are put into each house, to make the floor higher than the ground outside and to provide an absorbent for the droppings which are allowed to accumulate. When they are brought to the house, which will probably be their home as long as they live, the pullets are confined to the house, or a small temporary yard is attached to it, so that they cannot wander away. After a few days of confinement they accept the new home as their headquarters.

Adaptability of the colony system. The colony system as developed in Rhode Island attracted little attention elsewhere until very recent years. Since about 1900 many descriptions of it have been published, and numerous efforts have been made to adapt features of this system to operations in other localities. The principal obstacles to this are snow and predacious animals. Where snow lies deep for months it is not practical to keep fowls in widely distributed flocks in winter. In some places the plan of distributing the houses in summer and parking them (that is, placing them close together in a regular order) in winter has worked very well. Where wild animals are numerous, colony methods cannot be extensively applied, but on most farms a limited application of the system will greatly increase the amount of poultry that can profitably be kept.

In England many farmers use smaller colony houses than those in use in Rhode Island, and move them often, not letting a house stand in the same spot long enough to kill the grass. Some of the houses used in this way are provided with small wheels. The advantage of moving houses often is greatest when the fowls are on good arable land, upon which there are, or will be, crops that can utilize the manure which the birds leave on the land. If the houses are moved methodically, the fertilizer will be evenly distributed.