Chicken coop

“ The common open circular wicker coop I regard as an exceedingly useful article in a poultry-yard, but not for the purpose to which it is generally applied, of keeping the hens in, but, on the contrary, for keeping them out. I have found it very convenient for feeding chicken under; the oatmeal, grits, and other expensive food used for the young birds is apt to be devoured by those of advanced growth, an evil which is readily prevented by placing it under a large coop which admits the younger chicken, and enables them to feed undisturbed by the others. ”

“ Chicken Little had her campaign already planned. “I’m going to get Ernest’s and Frank’s and Sherm’s rubber boots for us. They’ll be lots too big, but we can tie them around the legs to make them stick on. They will be fine in the mud and water if we have to wade in the slough. Yes, and they will protect us from the snakes, too. We won’t put them on till we get down there; they will be too hard to walk in. And we can take Jilly’s red wagon and put the smallest chicken coop on it. It isn’t heavy.” ”

“ RAISING YOUNG CHICKENS
Model chicken coop—open on pleasant days
It is poor practice to set your hens in the chicken house. Prepare as many fresh nests as you expect to need. Put them in the cellar, unused shed, [148] under the porch, or any convenient and protected place. Doors of wire netting or slats are a great convenience. When a hen is broody, take her off the nest the first night and put her into the new place with an artificial egg or two. Ten to one she will stay all right. ”

“ Everybody came on deck then, perfectly willing and even anxious to be contented. But not all could succeed. There were some who did not think any better of chickens than the steward did.
The chicken coop, which stood on the quarter-deck, contained over thirty chickens, and it was provided with a slat bottom. People who object to having chickens roaming about over the lawn of a farm-house will sympathize with the passengers on the Ushuaia who did not like to have a chicken coop in the centre of the quarter-deck. ”

“ He said a cold coop meant that the chickens got chilly and exhausted their vitality growing thick feathers when all their strength should have been used in egg-laying, and that a hot coop meant that the chickens felt lax and indolent. A hot coop enervated a chicken and made it too lazy to lay eggs, Millington said, but this regulator he was having made would keep the heat at an even temperature, summer and winter, and render the hens bright and cheerful and inclined to do their best. ”

“ The hens must be placed in coops, where all the sun can reach them; and there should be a little run of a few feet, enclosed by laths, wire-work or netting, for the hen and chicken to exercise in. The common triangular wooden coop is a very useful one for early chicken; but it should have a false bottom, to keep them off the cold ground, and this should be made to slide in and out, so as to be readily removed and cleaned. The coops, at night, should be warmly covered up with sacking or matting, and plenty of short hay or soft straw placed in the interior. ”

“ Gratz. "Such poultry don't have no hoofs."
"Runnin' around," explained the visitor. "Runnin' around in the coop. I can tell if a chicken has got any disease that my trade wouldn't like, if I see it runnin' around in the coop. There's a lot in the way a chicken runs. In the way it h'ists up its leg, for instance. That's what the trade calls 'on the hoof.' [17] So I'll just go out and have a look around the coop—"
"For twenty cents a pound anybody could let buyers see their chickens on the hoof, I guess," said Mrs. Gratz. ”

“ We had built a sort of greenhouse; it had not been used long, the plants not proving green enough to live in it, and it had been converted into a chicken-coop for the forcing of infant chickens. No better place could be selected, if light was wanted; for the sun poured down upon its glass roof and sides all day long, till the chickens got so over-heated under the forcing process that they spent most of their time, when they were not engaged pulling out each other’s feathers, standing and panting with their mouths open. ”

“ Of all the youngsters in the barnyard the chickens are the most attractive. They are fluffy little balls of down of most engaging appearance, and I don't blame Beatrice very much because she shows a longing to eat them. She is allowed out for a run with "her nine farrow" every day, and she has to be watched carefully to keep her away from the chicken coops. Yesterday she went over beside the road to pasture, and the boy who was watching her thought she was safe, but as soon as he took his eye off her, she made off to a neighbour's barnyard, attacked a chicken coop and got a couple of chickens. ”

“ It only lacked the traditional well in the centre, with the iron-bound bucket resting [Pg 781] on the edge, and the iron rods for pulley, wrought into the form of a cross, to make it a perfect little cloister. ‘Tis true that the resemblance might be impaired by the large chicken-coop in the corner, which emitted a chorus of cackling suggestive of a prosperous barnyard. But a flourishing coop is no contemptible accessory to the effects of a religious community; and as for its encumbering the cloister, that is very easily explained. ”

“ Chicken manure was always highly prized but usually in short supply because preindustrial fowl weren't caged in factories or permanently locked in hen houses and fed scientifically formulated mixes. The chicken breed of that era was usually some type of bantam, half-wild, broody, protective of chicks, and capable of foraging. A typical pre-1900 small-scale chicken management system was to allow the flock free access to hunt their own meals in the barnyard and orchard, luring them into the coop at dusk with a bit of grain where they were protected from predators while sleeping helplessly. ”

“ Mr. Gubb next gave his attention to the chicken coop. It was preëminently a hand-made chicken coop of the rough-and-ready variety.
Philo Gubb entered the chicken-house and looked around, lighting his dark lantern and throwing its rays here and there that he might see better. The house was so low of roof that he had to stoop to avoid the roosts, and the tails of the chickens brushed his hat. It needed brushing, so this did no harm. The hens and the two roosters complained gently of this interruption of their beauty sleep, and moved along the roosts, and Mr. ”

“ The easiest coop to make is shown in the illustration of the young chicken shelter (Fig. 18) . It consists of a pitched roof mounted on three boards six inches high. This shelter may be three feet wide and two feet deep, and from the ground to the peak the distance is twenty-four inches. Slats are nailed across the front to prevent the hen from getting out, although not so close as to prevent the chicks from squeezing through. A coat or two of paint will improve the appearance of this shelter, and each mother-hen should be provided with a separate coop for her family. ”

“ CHAPTER XV.
how to roast a chicken—a good square meal once more—on the tramp again—we meet a darkey who furnishes us supper and chickens from his master’s hen coop—surprised by two white men while eating breakfast—passing through walhalla—avoiding some cavalry.
When we made camp on this, the twelfth day of my tramp, it was back of a plantation, in a large woods, near a spring. We always made our camp near good water, if possible. Here I showed the captain how to cook a chicken ”

“ I do not know how to prevent the hawks from taking toll for their work, but if the farmers would build respectable chicken-coops, they would not be troubled with owls, for they being nocturnal are not out until the chickens have gone to roost and it is only the farmer who allows his poultry to sleep in trees that suffers, and we might say in the words of the small boy, “It’s just good enough for him.” ”

“ Somewhere between Chicago and Lansing, Mich., Harvey L. New, a fair-haired boy of 14, is wandering along the dusty roads carrying a nightcap, a pocket full of feed and Sarah Jane, a stub-toed chicken.
In his boyish heart he carries a love for his chicken, the life of which he felt bound to save at the cost of his home.
Harvey visits his grandfather’s farm near Lansing every summer. A year ago his grandmother presented him with Sarah Jane, then only three weeks old.
He brought the chicken to his home at 4969 Prairie avenue and built a coop in the back yard. ”

“ Chickens should be fed from ten to fourteen days in the coops. I give no feed whatever to the chicken the first day he is in the coop, but I keep a supply of sour milk in the trough for him. I feed my chickens three times a day. ”

“ A coop of chickens is placed near the master of ceremonies, and two or three assistants surround the barrel. The head dresser grasps a chicken by the head, gives it a swing from the coop to the barrel, bringing the chicken's neck on to the iron rim of the barrel. The body goes 128 into hot water and the head goes overboard. ”

“ Before the chicken is dead he is stripped of everything except a few pin feathers—with one sweep of the hand on each side of the body and a dozen pulls at the wing feathers. The yet jerking, featherless bodies are thrown to the pin-feather man, who picks out the thickest of the feathers, singes the fowls over a charcoal grate-fire and tosses them to one of the under-cooks who cuts them open, cuts them up, and pots them, all inside of two minutes from the coop. A team of three or four expert darkies will dispose of one hundred and fifty chickens in an hour. ”

“ Pat was the beauty of the coop, but in a day or so his legs began to waver and sink under him, and he, too, never knew a Maytime. Cluxley was always the belated one and outlived him some three days, but on the fourth morning she went staggering into the undiscovered realm.
People say, "But you did well to keep your Easter chicken alive fourteen days. If the truth were known, you would find that very few of those candy-sale chickens hold out so long as that. We bought one for the children, but it was dead before Sunday. It is next to impossible to raise chickens by hand, even with experience. ”

“ Their Pen or Coop must be contrived so, that the Hen (who must be with them, to sit over them) may not go at liberty to eat away their meat, but be kept to her own diet, in a part of the Coop that she cannot get out of. But the Chicken must have liberty to go from her to other parts of the Coop, where they may eat their own meat, and come in again to the Hen, to be warmed by her, at their pleasure. You must be careful to keep their Coop very clean.
TO FEED CHICKEN
Fatten your Chicken the first week with Oatmeal scalded in Milk; the sPage 232econd with Rice and Sugar in Milk. ”

“ Great care should be taken that the very young chicks do not run about the wet ground or on damp grass, as this is the most prominent and fatal cause of disease. While under the coop with their mother, a shallow pan or plate of water should be supplied to the chicks, as in a deeper vessel they are liable to drench themselves and take cold, or possibly to get drowned.
CHICKEN OR FOWL SALAD. 931. INGREDIENTS.—The remains of cold roast or boiled chicken, 2 lettuces, a little endive, 1 cucumber, a few slices of boiled beetroot, salad-dressing No. ”

“ As soon as the chickens are hatched, a little bit of wood, with a strip nailed across it, to serve as a step, should be put from the opening of the box where the nest is to the ground, to enable the chickens to get in and out of the nest as easily as possible; and when they are permitted to go out of doors, which is generally in three or four days, the hen should be put under a coop, to prevent her from wandering, till the chickens are strong enough to accompany her, which will probably be in about ten or fifteen days. ”

“ It is much better to let the hen free with her chickens, but if she must be cooped, the best method is to put a coop with an open front to it, and the back against the wall of some building, and then tether the hen. ”

“ During the day the hen is kept in the outer compartment, the chickens having liberty, and the food and water being placed outside; whilst at night she is put in the inner portion of the coop, and a piece of canvas or sacking hung over the bars of the outer half. If the top be glazed, a little food and the water-vessel may be placed in the outer compartment at night, and the chicks will be able to run out and feed early in the morning, being prevented by the canvas from going out into the cold air. ”

“ The excellence of spring chickens depends as much on feeding as on cooking them. If there are conveniences for building a coop, say five feet square, on the ground, where some spring chickens can be kept for a few weeks, feeding them with the scraps from the kitchen, and grain, they will be found plump, the meat white, and the flavor quite different from the thin, poorly fed chickens just from market. ”

“ If the weather is fine, the coop is placed out of doors in an exposed spot, with a sheltering canopy of canvas, foliage, or straw, when the sun is too hot.”
“There the young chickens are safe,” said Emile, “out of danger of any accident amongst the boisterous population of the poultry-yard. If some danger arises, the hen gives her warning call, and those that are outside immediately scamper through the narrow passage and take refuge with their mother. Now about their food.”
“Food is not forgotten: under the coop is a plate containing water, and another with pap. ”