Page:An Encyclopædia of Cottage, Farm, and Villa Architecture and Furniture.djvu/649

 MALT-I10USi:S, POULTRY-HOUSES, ETC. 025 in the windpipe, in siK-li numbers as to stop respiration, and which, if they cannot cough them up, soon kill them. An infusion of the yellow toad-flax (Linaria vulgaris), a nauseously bitter weed, is given as a preventive, but is seldom successful." We have already (§ 770) noticed the great advantage of heat for the common hen, when laying, hatching, or rearing in the winter season. IMr. INIain's remarks are so complete, that we can add nothing to them, except strongly recommending the poidtry-house always to be placed in some position in the farm-yard where it may benefit either from the warmth of cattle, fermenting dung, or a fireplace in constant use. 1;5'28. The peculiar suitableness of Poultry as Live Stock to a Farm Labourer will not be doubted by those who have attended to the subject. A correspondent observes that it has long been a common s;iying, that none but Scotch highlanders or Irish cottagers Jiave the luxury of fresh eggs in winter, or very early chickens in spring ; and, as their poultry are of the common breeds, the cause of their continuing to lay eggs when others stop, can only be, that they roost in the same rooms with their owners, enjoy some little warmth, and probably live partly on cooked food. On the other hand, the poultry which are lodged in places fitted up for them in farm buildings, or other outhouses, are forced to endure a much lower temperature, during winter, than is suitable for their laying at that season, and to live almost entirely on uncooked food. We may add, also, another important consideration, which is, that the poultry which live with their owners enjoy a superior degree of cleanliness to those who live in even the cleanest poidtry- houses. Even in the lowlands of Scotland, the poultry roost, in many places, over the box-beds, or on the collar beams over tlie living-room ; and the laying-jilace is well known to be in t!ie straw at the bottom of the box-bed. In several parts of France and Germany the peasants rear and fatten poultry for the market as a business, and in most places everv man who has a house has also poultry, which, as in Scotland, are lodged within its walls ; and fed chiefly on cooked food. On both sides of the Lower Rhine, almost every peasant fattens one or two geese, and sells the livers (Jes foies grasses) to the nearest inn, or rich man, or takes them to market, and counts on obtaining for them as much as will pay for the food of the geese, retaining the flesh and feathers as clear profit. Evei-y Englishman who has travelled in the north of France and the south of German}' must have been struck with the superiority of the poultry vihich he meets with at the inns in those countries, to that which he finds in the inns of his own. The cause appears to be, that the breeding and fattening of this description of live stock is in the hands of those who can afford sufficient time to enter into all the minute details necessary for insuring complete success, attended at the same time by profit. In Britain, the large farmer cannot do this, while the labourer is precluded from doing it by dif- ferent causes, but chiefly, we believe, from ignorance of the practice ; and of the benefit which he might derive from it. We except, however, from this charge the families of labourers in particular districts : such as the neighbourhood of Wokingham in Berk- shire, famous for its fat fowls ; and the neighbourhood of Aylesbury, for its early ducks, &c. Were the mode pointed out to the wives of farm labourers by which they could rear and fatten poultry in the best manner, and induce hens to lay and hatch in the winter season, the profit they would soon obtain from taking the articles to market would be an inducement for them to carry it on. It is well known that poultry have been long hatched, in the neighbourhood of Paris, by hot water, and they might easily be so any where, either on a large or a small scale. (See Gard. Mag., vol. iv. p. 305.) Chickens have also been hatched in the bark-bed of a hot-house, by sinking a half hogs- head barrel in the tan, placing the eggs in a basket at the bottom covered by a piece of flannel, and covering the top of the cask with a flat board. For details see Gard. Mag., vol. viii. p. 688. It is not our business, in this work, to enter into farther details on the subject ; but it is our duty to show the architectural arrangements, in cottages, which are required for putting it in practice. 1329. The Poultry-house for the Cottager, who would have his hens lay diu'ing the winter, must in some way or other derive heat from the fireplace of his living-room. 'I'here are several ways in which this may be accomplished, both in cottages already existing, and in new cottages. In cottages already existing, the living-room fire is either placed against one of the exterior, or one of the interior walls. When it is placed against an exterior wall, a poultry place is easily formed by a small lean-to building, erected outside the house, against the back of the fireplace ; and, if the wall behind the fire be so thick as not to admit of much heat escaping to the outside, a part of it may be taken out, and either a thinner wall, or a fire-stone or fire-brick partition, or, what will be most eflTective, a cast-iron plate, substituted for it. Where the principal fuel is wood or peat, and the fire is made on the hearth, less heat will escape through the wall, and in that case there may be a pit formed under the fireplace, of its full width, and extending under the wall, and the entire floor of the poultry-house outside. Into this pit, the ashes from the fire may be allowed to drop through a grate, and the heat from them will thus bft 4 A