When chicks are eight weeks old, they should be separated from their mothers, and the families divided; the young pullets being relegated to colony coops, in an orchard or partly shaded meadow, where they will have extensive free range; the cockerels being placed in the semi-confinement of yards, as their ultimate fate is the frying-pan, which necessitates plump bodies, while free range would only develop frame and muscle.
Our colony houses are six feet long, three feet wide, thirty-six inches high in front, and twenty-four inches at the back. They are made of light scantling; the ends, back and roof being covered with roofing-paper, and the front, to within eight inches of the ground, with unbleached muslin, which insures perfect ventilation and prevents rain beating in upon the birds when they are on the roosts, which are fixed a foot from the bottom and nine inches from the back of the coop. Two holes are made, nine inches apart, in the middle of each end of the coop, and a heavy rope knotted through them, to form handles.
The coops having no flooring, and the whole construction being light, they are easily moved to fresh ground each week, and so kept clean with little trouble, an important item when there is a large quantity being used. Having a large orchard, we placed the coops in rows thirty feet apart, as two sides of the orchard adjoin woodland, through which a never-failing spring-stream runs, so the birds have a splendid range.
Twenty birds are placed in each coop. The first week a portable yard, five feet long, is placed in front of each coop so that the young chicks cannot wander off and get lost, as they surely would in strange quarters. During that time a self-feeding hopper and a drinking-fountain are placed inside of the coop. When the yard is removed, the individual vessels are dispensed with, large drinking-tubs and feed-hoppers being stationed midway between every four coops, to reduce time and labour in caring for the birds.
THE POULTRY YARD
The large hoppers are nothing more than boxes, five feet long, two feet wide and six inches deep, over which is placed an A-shaped cover, made of slats, one inch apart, to prevent the birds getting into the box and scratching the grain onto the ground, where it will be wasted. For water, five-gallon kegs are used, with an automatic escape, which keeps a small pan continually full. Both feed and water are placed under a rough shelter, to protect them from sun and rain. Using such large receptacles, it is only necessary to fill them every other day.
Feed consists of a dry mash, composed of ten pounds of wheat bran, ten pounds of ground oats, one pound of white middlings, one pound of old-process oil-meal and ten pounds of beef scraps, all well mixed. In addition to that, they receive at night a feed of wheat and cracked corn—two parts of the former to one of the latter. About half a pint is scattered in front of each coop, at about four P. M.
Grit is supplied in large quantities. Being near a stone-crusher, we buy the screenings by the cart-load and dump it in heaps on the outskirts of the orchard, where it does not show, but is quite accessible to the chicks.
On these rations, without any variation, the pullets are kept until September, when they are transferred to their winter quarters—houses twelve feet wide, ten feet high in front, sloping to eight feet at the back. Each house is divided by wire netting into twelve-foot compartments, in each of which forty birds are kept.