THE DOLLAR HEN FARM

As has already been emphasized, the way to get money out of the chicken business is not to put so much in.

Land, however, well suited to the purpose, should not be begrudged, for interest at six per cent, will afford a very considerable extra investment in land well suited to the business if it in any way cuts down the cost of operation.

The Plan of Housing.

The houses are the next consideration.  On most poultry farms they are the chief items of expense.  I know of a poultry farm near New York City where the house cost $12.00 per hen.  The owner built this farm with a view of making money.  People also buy stock in Nevada gold mines with a view of making money.  I know another poultry farm owned by a man named Tillinghast at Vernon, Connecticut, where the houses cost thirty cents per hen.  Mr. Tillinghast gets more eggs per hen than the New York man.  Incidentally, he is sending his son to Yale, and he has no other visible means of support except his chicken farm.

For the region of light soils and the localities which I have recommended for poultry farming, the following style of poultry house should be used: 

No floors, single boarded walls, a roof of matched cypress lumber or of cheap pine covered with tarred paper.  This house is to have no windows and no door.  The roosts are in the back end; the front end is open or partly open; feed hoppers and nests are in the front end.  The feed hoppers may be made in the walls, made loose to set in the house, or made to shed water and placed outside the house.  All watering is to be done outside the houses; likewise any feeding beyond that done in hoppers.

The exact style of the house I leave to the reader’s own plan.  Were I recommending complex houses costing several dollars per hen, this certainly would be leaving the reader in the dark woods.  With houses of the kind described it is hard to go far amiss.  The simplest form is a double pitched roof, the ridge-pole standing about seven feet high, and the walls about four.  The house is made eight by sixteen, and one end—­not the side—­left open.  For the house that man is to enter, this form cannot be improved upon.

The only other points are to construct it on a couple of 4x4 runners so that it can be dragged about by a team.  Cypress, or other decay-proof wood should be used for these mud-sills.  The framing should be light and as little of it used as is consistent with firmness.  If the whole house costs more than twenty-five dollars there is something wrong in its planning.

This house should accommodate seventy-five or eighty hens.

For smaller operations, especially for horseless, or intensive farming, a low, light house may be used, which the attendant never enters.  A portion of the roof lifts up to fill feed-hoppers, gather eggs or spray.  These small houses may be made light enough to be moved short distances by a pry-pole, the team being required only when they are moved to a new field.