A colony house on skids, 7 × 12 feet, as recommended by the Oregon Experiment Station to accommodate 30 to 40 fowls
A building that is practically fireproof may be made of cement blocks for foundation and walls, with a concrete floor six inches higher than the outside ground. Wood may be used for the rafters and ceiling, the roof being covered with metal, tile, or asbestos roofing, and the inside ceiling plastered.
Another building which will provide seventy-five or one hundred fowls with roosting, scratching, and nesting-room in the winter, when foul weather makes confinement necessary, is twenty feet long, twelve feet deep, six feet high in the rear, and ten feet high in front. It has a brick foundation and a concrete floor that is ten inches above the level of the ground at the front of the building, in order to bring it well above the surface of the ground in the rear—the site is a sloping one.
In the front are three windows, one foot from the sides of the building, one foot below the top, and one foot apart. They are five feet four inches wide, three and one-half feet high, and fitted with burlap-covered frames, which may be lifted and fastened against the ceiling when so desired. Weather boards, sheathing paper, and narrow boards on the inside form the walls.
Plan of a house to give roosting, scratching and nesting accommodations to seventy-five or a hundred fowls
Directly in front, and extending the length of the building, is a glass-inclosed sun room four feet high and five feet wide. One end of this has a door to allow for the cleaning of the floor. The concrete floor of the main room extends into the sun room. Three openings, ten inches wide and one foot high, connect this sun room with the main room, and are provided with slides to be closed at night when the sun room is no longer a warm place.
The roosts are in the rear and extend the entire length of the building. There are three, placed four feet above the ground floor. These roosts are removable, being set in grooves cut into the wooden brackets which hold them. A hinged drop-board in sections is hung below the roosts.
The nests are forty in number in two tiers, and are fixed to the front wall of the building, below the windows. They are covered at the top, open at the side, and have a running-board before them one foot wide. Nests and boards are supported by stout wooden brackets about three feet apart. Nests and perches are reached by climbing-boards at one end of the room. The door is placed at the opposite end of the building, and is twenty-six inches wide and six feet high. It can be made wider if desired, as there is room.
