Practical Plan for a 10 Acre, 1,000 Hens Poultry Farm

Practical 10 Acre, 1,000 Hens Poultry Farm Ground Plan

In the proportions here indicated this plan calls for about 10 acres, but it can readily be expanded or reduced to meet individual requirements, without any material change in arrangement of departments.

This sketch is drawn to scale, except the range, which is reduced at broken lines to keep within page limits. Chick nursery and home garden are to be alternated to keep the soil free from disease germs.

Yards and pens are planned for 100-hen flocks but if Leghorns are kept the flocks probably will be much larger and most of the division fences omitted.

Orchard for Breeding Chickens

The orchard on the right side affords ideal quarters for breeding fowls and brooder chicks confined to temporary yards when necessary. When the chicks are able to look out for themselves they are to be transferred to the larger range in the rear.

While this layout is designed to meet the requirements of a “1,000-hen farm,” it can, without material change, be expanded to meet the demands of a much larger plant, or reduced to the modest proportions of a poultry department to be operated as a side line on a farm or elsewhere.

As here illustrated, it has a frontage of about 500 feet and should have a depth of about 850 feet, the rear portion being reduced for lack of space. These dimensions give approximately 10 acres and provide for a laying flock of 900 hens, also for the necessary breeding stock, which should always be housed separately from the laying flock and given much more range than it usually is practicable to provide for the latter.

Nursery for Brooder Chicks

Nursery space is provided for the brooder chicks, range for growing stock, and abundant ground for supplying the house table with fruits and vegetables. The west side of the plot, from the driveway back at least as far as the north end of the yards, should have a row of quick-growing evergreen trees to act as a windbreak.

House and Yards

This plan of locating buildings, yards, etc., offers many important advantages, such as easy access to the different buildings, limited fencing, few gates to open, and a comparatively limited amount of travelling in the daily care of the birds.

In this layout, as in every practical plant, the poultryman’s residence is taken as the center, the different departments of the work being located and planned with reference to distance from the residence and convenience of access there from.

A tolerably liberal allowance for lawn has been made, because a well-kept lawn adds much to the attractiveness of the home and to enjoyment of it. Moreover, the lawn need not be waste land, but can be utilized for the young chicks throughout the brooding season.

Neat outdoor brooders, hen coops, or even colony houses around the edge of the lawn, detract little from its beauty, and a smooth, evenly mowed grass plot provides ideal range for chicks during the first few weeks of their lives.

With light, sandy soil it is practicable to raise chicks, year after year, on the same plot of ground, without danger from gapes or other chick diseases. In most instances, however, the poultiyman will find that much better results can be secured if his chicks are not brooded more than two years in succession on the same ground.

In this diagram, therefore, two plots of equal size have been set aside, one of which is to be used as a chick nursery and the other as a kitchen garden, alternating them every two or three years, or as conditions require.

A sod or permanent growing crop of some sort is desirable on the plot used by the chicks, and with a little attention this may readily be secured, seeding the ground with a quick-growing lawn grass mixture, or with scarlet clover, alfalfa, oats, rye, rape, etc., as season and climate may dictate.

The Barn

At the rear of the lawn is located the barn, which should be of good size, as it is intended to furnish room for storage of feed, litter, etc. Being within easy access of all the houses, little labour is required in distributing supplies from here as needed.

Except on large plants, the plan of using a centrally located barn for general feed storage will be found more satisfactory and more economical than building a separate feed house, it being understood that each poultry house is to be provided with suitable bins, boxes or metal containers for storing small quantities of grain for immediate use.

If dressed market fowls are to form an important branch of production, a suitable room for dressing and packing them should be provided in the basement of the barn, where the incubator cellar also can conveniently be located, if provision is not made for the incubators in the house cellar or in a separate house.

Permanent Brooder House

On the east side of the rear lawn’ may be located a permanent brooder house. Even where most of the chicks are to be raised in outdoor brooders or colony houses, a small permanent brooder house will be found convenient. Early hatched chicks can be brooded more conveniently and with less expense in a permanent house than in scattered colony houses.

When the house is not needed for chicks, it may be utilized for many other purposes, being especially convenient for fattening surplus market birds, conditioning show specimens, or for any of the various other purposes for which temporary accommodations are required at more or less frequent intervals the year around.

Home Fruit Garden

Next to the brooder house is located the home fruit garden, which, in the dimensions indicated, will furnish room for such small fruits as strawberries, raspberries. blackberries, grapes, etc., in sufficient quantities for the use of the average family.

About this Article

This article is taken from Poultry Houses and Fixtures, eighth edition, published by Reliable Poultry Journal Publishing Company of Quincy, Illinois in 1919. Price $1.00

It was filled with poultry house plans and layouts for small farms and back yard enterprises, many of which had been produced by universities and the US department of agriculture.

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