Page:Australian enquiry book of household and general information.djvu/191

 shape, according to the fancy of the builder, though the round house is most convenient for all purposes.

Proceed as I have directed for the other, leaving out the walls of saplings, and instead have wire netting to the depth of two or three feet, nailed round the top, from the wall plate. Then, when the roof is thatched or paled, you have a fowl house open all round the sides. Now place all the roosts right up in the top or roof, having a "hen's" ladder, as I've heard it called, for them, to reach them.

This is one of the best designs for a fowl house I know of, being cool, healthy, and easily cleaned, and I quite think it would answer for all climates, even the coldest, if the roof was made high enough to allow of all the birds roosting up under it.

When his fowl house is finished our young farmer cannot do better than whitewash it at once, inside and out, nests, roosts, walls, and all. The following is one of the best washes I know of for the purpose, he can substitute white ashes for lime if he has no lime by him, and does not mind the trouble of sifting the ashes:—Slake half a bushel of lime (or ashes) with as much boiling water as will make it of the consistency of ordinary paint, melt one pound of glue in water over the fire,and mix with the lime. Give three coats of this to the building, letting one dry before the other is applied. While the last is still damp, dust fine sand over the building, either throw it lightly with the hand or else dredge it from a common flour dredger. One lady to whom I gave this recipe improved upon my plan by substituting for sand the small shells and sand found in quantities near the sea shore. The effect was very good.

Having built his fowl house, the next thing is to get some fowls. This he can easily do, no matter what colony or part of it he is in. As he wants quick returns let him buy three or four young hens and a rooster, and if he has the chance a hen with a clutch of young chickens, no matter what the breed, by and bye when he is in a better position he can afford to choose some special breed. Now it may happen that he is short of money and cannot afford to pay cash for fowls, then there are such transactions as exchange and barter. Let him look round and see what he has, that he can exchange with someone for hens. He has wood perhaps, or if not he can easily collect a load outside his own land, and a load of wood should be equal to four fowls, or more if it is a big load. He has milk, let him offer to supply it for a month—a quart per day, in exchange for half a dozen hens.

These are little ways and means that appear too trivial to publish, yet many would not think of them unless they were suggested. There is hardly anything in this book, possible for a woman, that