POULTRY. Different kinds of birds reared for the production of eggs, feath ers, and for the use of their bodies as animal food. The domestic poultry in common use in Britain are the common domestic fowls, or cock and hen, the turkey, the duck, and the goose ; to which may be added, as occasionally reared, the guinea fowl and the peacock. The most generally useful kind of poul try is the common domestic fowl, which, though a native of India, accompanies man through all climates, but which is only productive of abundance of eggs when well fed and warmly lodged. Hence, all poultry-houses, when not built adjoining an apartment in which fire is kept, or over astable or cow-house, where they might benefit by the heat generated by the larger animals, ought to be fur rushed with flues, or some other means of generating heat artificially during win ter and spring. Without some mode of effecting this, poultry will seldom pro duce abundance of eggs in cold weather, particularly in the colder parts of Brit ain. Hence, in Scotland, the common hen roosts in the same room that the cottager lives in ; and the poultry-house of the small farmer is a loft either over his kitchen, or over his cow-honse. In the management of poultry it is not sufficient to supply abundance of food and warmth, but it is equally necessary that they have ample space for exercise. This space should always contain living plants of various kinds, and some grav elly or sandy soil ; because worms, snails, and insects, as well as occasionally grass and herbage, form a part of the food of poultry ; andsand or gravel is swallowed by them for the purpose of promoting digestion. Hence, no healthy poultry can ever be reared in towns, however much the natural food may be imitated by the supply of animal matters, her bage, and sand : the want of exercise in poultry so circumstanced will soon be come evident from the appearance of the fowls, and from the soft shell of their eggs, in consequence of the animal func tions not being efficiently performed.
In the management of these animals it must be remembered, cold exercises a constant and determinate action on the lungs. The effect of this action is the more rapid and more severe the younger the animal is. When cold does not cause acute, and speedily fatal inflammation of the lungs, it produces a chronic in flammation, which is pulmonary con sumption. Heat always prevents the at tack, and, when it has taken place, sus pends its progress, and even sometimes arrests it entirely, and effects a complete cure. Pulmonary consumption is never, in any stage, contagious ; and fowls af fected with that disease, are not only all day long with the healthy fowls, but at night roosted in the same places, without communicating their disease to them. Lastly, the action of too-long confined air exposes these animals to abscesses of the cornea, and inflammation of the ball of the eye ; and these abscesses and in flammations are also caused by cold, es pecially with moisture.
Breeding Poultry.—The houses for this purpose may be built either of brick or stone, one story high, with wooden roofs, and must be heated by cast-iron steam pipes. Their ceilings and walls must be finished with Roman cement. Each house is to be divided into four compart ments ,—the first for hatching and rear ing chickens ; the second for breeding turkeys ; the third for ducks ; and the fourth for geese. A furnace is bdilt at one end, with a steam boiler to hold 50 gallons of water, which will heat a house 80 feet in length. The first two compart nients must have the steam-pipes pass around both rooms at the bottom of the walls, for hatching chicken and turkey eggs, and they must pass once around the other two rooms, ducks and geese requir ing less heat. The boiler must be also so constructed as to steam potatoes, pars nips, carrots, and herbs ; which, when cooked and mixed with milk, barley, oats, or peas, meat, or flour, produce the finest Chickens, and other poultry.