With respect to fattening poultry of every kind, it may be proper to observe, that the preceding recommendations as to fatten-ing-houses, have been given on the supposition that every kind of cramming and confinement in coops for fattening is to be given up; and that the fowls are to be kept constantly in good condition, and only confined for a week or two in a feeding-house, with a small yard attached, immediately before being killed. We may also observe that fowls, so far from fattening better alone and in solitary coops, actually eat more, and consequently fatten faster, when several are kept together, and free access allowed them to food at all hours of the day. A corresponding system has for some years past been adopted for feeding sheep and cattle, and with similar success. Having thus noticed the requisites common to all poultry-houses, a very few words will suffice to state what is peculiar to each.

440. The hen-house, as generally lodging the most numerous and useful class of poultry in a yard, requires to be the largest. The roosting-house should contain, at least, a square foot of area for every fowl that is to roost in it; this average allowing rather more than a square foot for fullgrown fowls, and less for chickens. The perches for roosting on may either form a slope from within 3 ft. of the ground, to within the same distance of the ceiling; or they may form a floor 4 ft. below the ceiling; the perches being placed across the house, and about 18 in. apart The form of these perches ought to be square or angular in the section; for gallinaceous fowls cannot bend their toes so as to grasp a round perch. The entrance for the fowls should be on a level with the roosting-floor, from which the ascent and descent on the outside may be by a ladder formed by nailing fillets of wood at regular distances across a board, to serve as steps; or, which is more architectural, by neat brick or stone steps, projected from the wall. In the inside, there may be a portable wooden ladder, to enable any chickens which may have fallen from the roost during the night to get up again in the morning, so as to go out with the other fowls, at the opening at the top of the outside stair.

There ought to be a shutter to this opening, which should be carefully closed every night, after the fowls have gone to roost, in order to exclude vermin. The great advantages of having the perches all on one level, on what is called a roosting-floor, instead of having them sloping like the stage of a green-house, are, that the whole of the fowls roost in the upper, and consequently warmest, part of the house; that there is no scrambling among the stronger fowls to get to the highest perch, in consequence of which the weaker ones are often thrown down and hurt; and that there is no temptation to the stronger fowls to fly up to their perches at night, or fly down in the morning, which always deranges the weaker ones that are obliged to go up and down to their perches by the ladder. The shutter to the opening at the top of the outside ladder should be opened every morning at sunrise; or, when the sun rises earlier than five or six o'clock, at whatever hour the workmen are accustomed to go to work, in order that the fowls may get out to pick up snails, worms, and insects, while the dew is on the grass, and before these vermin have returned to their holes in the soil.

Afterwards, the large door and all the windows of the roosting-house should be opened, and left in that state till towards the time when the fowls usually go to roost. The floor, in the mean time, should have been carefully washed out, so that, on the return of the fowls, they may find their roosting-house perfectly clean and sweet in every part.

441. The laying and sitting-houst for the common fowls may be of the same dimensions as the roosting-house; but, instead of being furnished with a framework of perches near the ceiling, there should be a number of boxes about 18 inches square, each with a little doorway cut in it in front, for the hen to enter and come out A row of these boxes should be ranged along the side and back walls on the floor, for sitting-boxes; above these, if many fowls are kept, may be another row of boxes for laying in, with similar doorways, and a ledge along them in front, broad enough to allow the hens to walk along it, and which may be ascended to by a ladder (like that of the roosting-house) at each end. When the hens seem inclined to sit, the requisite number of eggs is put into one of the lower tier of boxes for the hen to tit on; and the should be supplied with food and water in the house, to prevent her from leaving her eggs for more than a few minutes at a time. Some authors direct the laying-boxes to be always raised 3 ft. from the ground; but this is unnecessary if only a few fowls are kept, and the floor is quite dry, and where the hens have a different house for laying in, from that in which they roost.

As the floor of the laying-house will not be so dirty as that of the roosting-house, and as a moist floor would occasion cramp, and consequently death to the young chickens, it should never be washed, but only strewed with clean sand every day, the dirty sand of the previous day being first swept out.