Practical Farm Buildings: Plans and Suggestions

by Andrew Frederick Hunter

In building a hen-house the working unit is the floor and air space required for each hen. A safe working rule is about five to six square feet of floor space, and about eight to ten cubic feet of air space for every fowl. Foundation walls should be built deep enough to prevent heaving by the frost and high enough to prevent surface water from entering. Where large stones are scarce sometimes grout walls may be made with gravel or small stones and cement; or the building may be set upon posts set well into the ground, in which case hemlock or hard wood boards should be securely nailed to bottom half of sills and extend down to natural ground level, to exclude rats.

Dampness is fatal to hens; build or drain so as to secure dryness. It is better by far to have a cold, dry house than a warm, damp house. The warmer the air the more moisture it will hold; when this moist air comes in contact with a cold surface condensation takes place, which is often converted into hoar-frost. The remedy is to remove the moisture as far as possible, by first cutting off the water from below which comes up from the soil. The water table is the same under a hen-house as it is outdoors; dirt floors, therefore, are liable to be damp. Stone filling covered with soil is sometimes difficult to keep clean and may only partially keep out dampness. Board floors are short lived if the air is not allowed to circulate under them, and in a cold climate a free circulation of air under the floors makes them very cold; in either case they are likely to harbor rats. A good cement floor is nearly as cheap as a good matched-board floor, counting lumber, sleepers, nails, time, etc. When once properly made it is good for all time. It is practically rat-proof, easily cleaned and perfectly dry, cutting off absolutely all the water from below. If covered with a little soil, or straw, or both, as all floors should be, it will be a warm floor.

A low house is easier warmed than a high one. Solid walls radiate heat rapidly. The best way to make a poultry house warm is to build it as low as possible without danger of bumping heads. There will then be ample air-space for as many fowls as the floor space will accommodate. Too much air-space makes a house cold; it cannot be warmed by the heat given off by the fowls.

Sunlight is a necessity to fowls; it carries warmth and good cheer, and tends to arrest or prevent disease. Too much glass makes a house too cold at night and too warm in the daytime, because glass gives off heat at night as readily as it collects it in the daytime. Much glass makes construction expensive; allow one square foot glass surface to about sixteen square feet floor space, if the windows are properly placed. The windows should be high, and placed up and down, not horizontally and low (Fig. 4). In the former the sunlight passes over the entire floor during the day, from west to east, drying and purifying practically the whole interior. The time sunshine is most needed is when the sun is lowest, from September 21 to March 21. The lines in Fig. 4 represent the extreme points which the sunshine reaches during this period, with the top of a four-foot window placed four feet, six feet, and seven feet high, respectively. With the highest point of the window at four feet, the direct sun’s rays would never reach farther back than nine feet; at six feet it would shine thirteen and one-half feet back, and at seven feet it would strike the back side of the house one foot above the floor.

Fig. 4—Showing extent of sun’s rays.

Make the yards long and narrow (Fig. 5). Double yards are desirable where space can be given for them; they allow a rotation of green crops, which cleanses and sweetens the ground, and converts the excrement which would become a source of danger into a valuable food crop. The shape of the fields, the slope of the land, and the location of other farm buildings will have much to do with the shape of the yards and mode of access to the poultry buildings. Generally the yards should be long and narrow, so as to make cultivation easy. Two rods wide and eight rods long is a good size yard for forty or fifty hens, although more room would be better. This size permits a row of fruit trees in the center for shade, which is a necessity.

Much of the dampness in poultry houses in winter is due to the condensation of the breath of the fowls. The warm air exhaled from the lungs is heavily charged with moisture, and this, coming in contact with the cold roof and walls, is condensed into hoar-frost, which melts and drops to the floor when the house is warmed up by the sun. In recent years considerable success has attended efforts made to prevent this moisture by ventilating the pens through muslin curtains set into the tops of doors, or forming a part of the front wall (see plans of Dr. Bricault’s poultry house, page 12, and of the Maine Experiment Station House, page 18), also by setting the curtains into part of the window spaces. In Fig. 6 is given an illustration of an experiment tried on the Lone Oak Poultry Farm, Reading, Mass., in the winters of 1904-6. Being much annoyed by the moisture which collected on the roof and walls in the night and, melting, dropped to the floor when the sun warmed the roof and walls during the day, frames the size of one fourth of each window were made and common muslin tacked on. To better ascertain the effect of the curtains the windows in house No. 1 were left closed, as formerly; in house No. 2 the top sash was dropped the length of one light and a curtain set into the space; in house No. 3 the windows were dropped from the top and raised from the bottom, curtains being set into both spaces. In house No. 1 the dampness and “chill” remained as before; in house No. 2 there was some improvement; in house No. 3 there was a great improvement, and the temperature, in the coldest days of the winter, was about six degrees warmer in house No. 3 than in house No. 1 where the windows were all kept closed tight. The two curtains, making half the space of each window, were not quite sufficient to dry out the moisture, which had already got well established, but by installing the curtains both top and bottom as soon as the weather dropped below freezing the next fall, they were found to be ample to keep the pens well ventilated and quite dry.

Fig. 5—Make the yards long and narrow.