Fanny Field.
Chicken Houses.
I often read inquiries about the best plan for building hen houses. My plan is, for 100 fowls, to build a house for them to roost in, eight or even ten feet wide and sixteen feet long, one story high with tight floor of yellow pine flooring. I prefer a tight floor because it is easily cleaned out, and every time it is cleaned out and swept the floor should be well covered with slaked lime; one cleaning a week is often enough.
A building of the same size should be built with a dirt floor, or close one, as preferred, about ten or fifteen feet from the roosting house for the hens to lay and sit in. A petition may be made of laths dividing the house into two compartments, the front arranged for the laying hens and the back compartments for sitting hens; then the laying hens will not disturb the sitting hens. A closed passway should be made, say one and one half or two feet square leading from the roosting house to the laying house with a sliding door at each end to be used at pleasure. As it often happens in cold, snowy weather in winter it is not desirable to let the fowls out, then the slides at each end of the passway can be opened and feed and water placed in the laying house (because the floor in that house will always be cleanest), and all the fowls will soon learn to go in there to eat and drink, and lay if they want to. It is, I think, bad policy to force fowls to roost, lay, and sit all in the same room.
The boxes that contain the nests should be made so that they can be at any time taken out and the nests turned out in a pile, set on fire and the boxes held over the fire to kill any lice that may be sticking to them.
B. F. C.
Hike's Point, Ky.
A person signing himself a "Nobleman's Gardener," says in an English paper that it is a mistake to use poultry manure as a top-dressing for garden crops; for farm crops also, if the poultry and pigeon dung were in any considerable bulk. This, however, is not usually the case, and a hundred weight or two would not make much of an impression on a farm. The manure in question is a powerful fertilizer, containing ammonia, phosphates, and carbonate of lime in considerable quantity, also uric acid, all of which are valuable ingredients for the support of crops. The simplest method of preparing the manure for use is to partially dry it, then mix it with perfectly dry sifted soil or ashes in sufficient quantity that will enable the entire mixture to be rubbed through a half-inch sieve. A man can do this comfortably with the hand inclosed in a thick leather glove. In this finely powdered state it can be stored in a dry shed till wanted for use. It is an excellent top-dressing for onions, strawberries, and, in fact, for all vegetable crops that need assistance, also for fruit trees and lawns. It is best applied in showery weather in the spring—for lawns at the rate of two ounces, vegetable crops and strawberries three ounces, and fruit trees four ounces per square yard. If in very large bulk and needed for use in fields it would scarcely be necessary to pulverize it, as mixing it with dry soil, etc., and turning the heap over a few times would suffice for its ready application.