For many years the floor space per hen has been an interesting study to anyone reading poultry literature, either in books or in magazine articles.
Some fifteen years ago it was generally considered for a hen to do at all well she must have at least twenty square feet of floor space. Later, the number of feet was divided by half, and for some time ten square feet was considered to be the very least a hen could possibly do with. Then we come to the four square feet period, and this created a great deal of controversy. Many writers declared that it was impossible for any hen, no matter how housed, to do well in such a restricted space. At times, some visionary writer pictured a flock in one house, of what was then considered an enormous size. One Professor of poultry went so far as to state that he had successfully kept some three hundred hens in one flock, and had obtained most satisfactory results. This statement, however, was denied by others, and the Professor wrote an article in which he set forth that, while he had done this, he would never think of suggesting that the average poultry-keeper attempt it. In his statement there were some truths that it is well to remember, namely, that the average poultry-keeper would not give the flock the care and supervision necessary to keep it in health. In other words, the poultry-keeper would not attend to the necessary cleanliness, and disease would break out, and, in the average poultry house, under such conditions, this would mean the total annihilation of the flock.
THREE STERILE LAYING HOUSES CONTAINING 4500 PULLETS, WITH A FLOOR SPACE OF 7680 SQUARE FEET
As economy of space and labor is one of the main factors in getting a commercial profit where poultry is operated with, the large flock system appealed most strongly to The Corning Egg Farm. Long houses, under one roof, without divisions, had been attempted by others, and the endeavor to discover the reason for the failures, where this had been attempted, was a very interesting study. It was found that the main stumbling block in houses of this type was draughts. To eliminate the draughts was the problem we then undertook to solve. It was found that if the houses were built in sections of twenty feet, and the partitions which divided the house into roosting closets were extended twelve inches beyond the dropping boards, and were carried from the floor to the roof, the air currents were broken up, and the difficulty of draughts was overcome.
Houses, as we believed in constructing them, were expensive, unless it was possible to carry a very large number of layers successfully in them. In studying the two hundred and twenty-five pullets as they worked contentedly in the No. 1 Laying House, which was but twelve feet wide, we became convinced that it was perfectly possible in a house sixteen feet wide by one hundred and sixty feet in length to carry fifteen hundred layers. This, to be sure, allowed the hen only a little over two square feet of floor space, with the dropping boards included. But, as we figured it, the hen also had the entire house for floor space, and, while it is true that fourteen hundred and ninety-nine sisters were her near neighbors, they all enjoyed the same large space to roam in. A house, then, of this size, accommodating fifteen hundred layers, was not an expensive house per bird, and, when you consider that the construction was such that the up-keep was practically nothing, it became not only not an expensive house, but really a very cheap one.
The success of the fifteen hundred layers in one house proved itself at once, and we never have seen the slightest necessity for altering the plan of the Laying House, as we first laid it out.
The large flock system works economies, then, in housing, in the amount of labor necessary to care for the birds, and in gathering the eggs. And there is no doubt but that a house of considerably greater length, with a flock ranging as high as two thousand birds, could successfully be handled. In fact, on one farm which has been in existence over twenty-five years, a Corning Method Laying House of two hundred feet in length has been in operation now for twelve months, and the owners write us that it is the most successful house on their entire farm, and that as rapidly as possible they are rebuilding all their Laying Houses, and making them of this type.