HOUSING
Frame for eleven-dollar chicken house
This first department properly includes not only the house proper with all its interior fixtures and its care, but the runs, the scratching shed, and all that has to do with the supply of air, warmth and sunshine and the protection of the flock from disease and vermin. No matter how plain and ordinary your chicken house is, the test of your fitness for the business comes with its care, not once a month, but day by day.
Chicken house a boy can build
Many people have an idea that the only way to keep hens healthy and productive is to let them range. Of course it is true that chickens on the farm seem to pick up a free living, but it is equally true that, as a general thing, the farmer does not keep any account with his chickens, and if they get into the corn crib or granary he does not know how much grain they eat and how much they waste. If they hide their nests and the eggs spoil, or if they sit and the chicks do not live to get to the barnyard, the owner is unaware of his loss. If, having no house and nest boxes, the hens lay in the weeds, in the wood pile, in the straw stack, in the haymow, it's no loss, for the women and children hunt the eggs and their time isn't worth anything! But do you believe there are any farm hens whose portraits will appear in the big magazines? Did you see that one last year in Collier's Weekly? Do you suppose there are many 200-eggers on farms with all their supposed advantages? I don't. But we shall never know, because no accurate records can be kept of chickens that run at large.
I shall take it for granted that you expect to begin in a small way with very little to invest. Remember that a few hens pay better per hen than a large number, but on the other hand it takes about as much time to care for a dozen as it does for one hundred. You will therefore look forward with satisfaction to increasing your flock as your capital grows and your time becomes more valuable.
Have you a suitable place for chickens? It should be dry, sunny, though with some shade, protected from severe winds and storms. The sun is the greatest purifier and disinfector in the universe, and you must have your house face the south or east if possible. Whether your first house is made of store boxes or of expensive matched lumber the principles are the same. To make the house dry it should be built on well-drained soil and should sit up six inches from the surface of the ground so that air can circulate freely beneath.
The only heat in the hen house comes from the hens and the sunshine. Therefore, to make the house warm you should have it small enough so that your hens can generate heat enough to keep warm in winter. The exposure should be such that the sun can get into it. If possible it should be shaded by trees or other buildings against storms and summer sun. Every hen needs from four to five square feet of floor space and only eight to ten cubic feet of air space. Square houses are more economical to build. Figure out with diagrams and drawings to scale just how large a building is needed to house your flock when you get it. How low at the back can you make it without bumping your head when you go inside? How high in front must it be to provide space for your door and window? What shaped roof will be easiest to build, most economical of lumber, and most satisfactory as a rain shed?
Self-feed grit box
Consider many things in the selection of material. Rough boards are a little cheaper, but how they do ruin good paint and whitewash brushes! Matched boards are cheaper and tighter than unmatched boards with strips nailed over the cracks. For the roof some kind of waterproof roofing material will keep the house warm and dry. If you have ever seen a chicken house with a cement floor you will be determined to have that kind. At first the expense may be greater than for boards, but if you live in your own home you can afford to put a cement floor in the chicken house sooner or later, especially if you do the work yourself. If you are a renter you will not feel like putting in expensive, permanent improvements. It will be warm and dry, saving many losses from wet feet and diseases brought on by dampness and cold. It is easy to clean. It will do away with the rat problem, and last forever. You can put it in after the house is built. Figure out the cost of a layer of cement one and one half inches thick laid on a bed of gravel and small stones. The cement is mixed as follows: one part Portland cement, three parts clean sand, five parts gravel. Mix the cement pretty thick, tamp it down conscientiously until perfectly level, then with a trowel smooth it and smooth it, over and over, until the surface is free from anything like a stone or large pebble.
The door to the chicken house should be well hung, easy to open, shut, and lock. The window is to admit light and sunshine, especially the latter. Very small panes may be cheap but they shut out the sun; twelve eight by ten panes in a single sash make a window of convenient size. The window should be placed so that the sun can get way back to the very farthest corner of the house. A high window is better for this than a low one. The diagram shows why.
The windows should be placed high enough to let the sun in to the back of the house
Sunshine and exercise are necessary for healthy fowls. They can stand cold weather well, if they are kept dry and active. Scratching sheds or open-front pens provide sunshine and exercise.
Scratching for food in the litter keeps hens moving and they get to be very athletic, jumping up to cabbages and fresh meat or grain self-feeders hung just out of reach. Scratching sheds in the North need adjustable curtains of coarse muslin to keep out driving rain, snow, and sleet. The State Agricultural Experiment Station at Orono, Maine, has made valuable studies of curtained sheds, and the use of this form of poultry house has found favour all over the country.
Grain self-feeder for fowls
The furniture of the hen house consists of roosts, dropping board, nests, dust box, and utensils to hold ground feed, grit, shell, and water. In making and erecting each piece ask yourself, "Will this be easy to clean?" The roosts should be in the corner farthest from door and window, out of all draughts. There should be enough of them to provide each fowl with six to eight inches of room and they should be set at least a foot apart. Do not have the roosts at different levels. It is hen nature to want the highest place, and they will fight and crowd and worry each other if there is a higher roost. Pieces of two by two, with the upper edge rounded, make good perches.
As the floor of the chicken house is also the dining table for the occupants it is extremely important that there should be a well-built platform under the roosts for droppings, in order to keep the floor clean. There should be space enough between this board and the perches to allow you to clean it frequently without difficulty.
Corner in chicken house, showing up-to-date furniture
If you ever tried to clean a range of wall nests you know why the up-to-date poultry men are discarding them as unsanitary. Many are now placing their nests under the dropping board. They are out of the way here, not too high for the hens, nor too low for you. Square nests, fourteen inches each way and at least a foot from the droppings platform, are satisfactory. A long door hinged at the top and hooked at the bottom should form the back of a row of nests. You open this to gather eggs and to clean the nests. The front, where the hens enter, should be in behind under the platform. As it is rather dark in there, the hens are pleased, because they like to preserve the old-time fiction that they are hiding their nests away. The nest should be five or six inches deep. Straw is the best nesting material. Short hay is next best. A hen cannot be happy with excelsior twisted round her toes and an unhappy hen is an unproductive hen.
The dust bath must be provided. Most baths are wet but hens are dry cleaners. The dust bath must be dry to be of any use; the lighter, finer, and dryer the better. A sunny corner of the house or shed is the best place. Sifted coal ashes and street dust is a good mixture.
Allow just as much space for the runs as you can afford to fence. If possible divide the enclosure in two and keep one part seeded to clover while the chickens are in the other. The heavier fowls usually make very little trouble flying over a fence of five foot wire netting even though it have no top strip. Clipping one wing may be necessary to restrain some individuals. Small trees in the runs are most desirable. Plant there such small fruit trees as plum or cherry and the hens will help to keep insects in check.
Covered dust bath in sunny corner
One of the biggest items of work in the chicken business is keeping the house clean. The health, comfort, happiness, and the very life of the hens, as well as the business, depend on this. Many a boy with a sort of natural knack at carpentry can build a chicken house out of second-hand lumber or out of a couple of piano boxes. But it takes a long distance form of gumption to keep any chicken house sanitary. The droppings should be cleaned up often and right here a word to the wise. Hen manure is a valuable garden fertilizer if it is sprinkled with land plaster while fresh. Otherwise it may become very nearly worthless. So if you have a garden or can dispose of your fertilizer every day or two you can make something extra on this by-product by a semi-weekly cleaning of roosts and droppings board. Litter is not dirt in the chicken house but it ought to be dry, fresh litter.
It is not enough that the house should look clean. The obvious dirt, bad as it is, does less harm than the almost invisible vermin that lurk in the crevices of roosts, nests, and walls. Whitewash is a very wholesome finish for the interior and should be put on at least twice a year. This is not enough however. Every square inch of surface should be wet thoroughly with some liquid which is sure death to vermin. Spray or brush may be used. I wonder if this could be done too often in hot weather. Once a month is probably often enough if good insect powder is used on the hens and in the nests. In winter the vermin are less active, but it is not safe to neglect them even then.