Fresh-Air Poultry Houses

The Classic Guide to Open-Front Chicken Coops for Healthier Poultry

by Prince T. Woods, M.D.

Norton Creek Press. October 2008, 190 pages,
Suggested retail price, $16.95. ISBN 0972177061.

Today's small-flock chicken coops are often beautifully constructed and maintained, but can be made dank, dark, and smelly through lack of ventilation. To stay healthy, your chickens need plenty of ventilation--probably more than they're getting today. Chickens, like miners' canaries, are easily harmed by poor air quality, by the action of ammonia and dust on their sensitive lungs. If it smells worse inside your chicken house than outside, your chickens are being harmed. Fresh-air coops are surprisingly odor-free: another advantage of the system. Dampness is another problem of closed houses Wet litter breeds disease and parasites and can make it hard for the chickens to stay clean. Fresh-air houses are drier than ordinary houses.

An open-front coop during a Canadian winter. Note the snow on the ground.

Darkness forces chickens, like parrots, to be artificially inactive. Fresh-air houses have a large window area that sheds plenty of light, even on gloomy winter days.

Healthy chickens, a light, dry, clean, odor-free coop -- These are compelling benefits, and you'll get these and more when you buy this book!

Instant Results. Closed chicken houses are so harmful that knocking out a wall can cause an immediate improvement, even in the middle of winter (see the case study in Chapter 2). After all, chickens have a thick coat of feathers to keep them warm, but have no such resistance to poor air quality and pathogens in the litter. Nor will they willingly eat in the dark. They can starve in the midst of plenty.

And in summer! Poor air circulation and a thick coat of feathers are hard on the chickens. It can easily kill them. Chickens are far more vulnerable to heat than cold.

All this was discovered over 100 years ago, but, sadly for the chickens, it has been largely forgotten.

Help is at hand. Fresh-Air Poultry Houses, by Dr. Prince T. Woods, a noted poultry health expert, will guide you to a healthier, more satisfying way of housing your flock. Dr. Woods describes not only his own poultry houses, but those of many of his clients, giving the book a breadth of experience that makes it unique. This 1924 book is old-fashioned and a little eccentric, but it is a wonderful resource. The chicken coop plans in the book are still practical today, and many are quite attractive. He even has portable chicken coop plans and plans for broody coops. He also describes how you can retrofit existing houses to fresh-air principles, by creating larger openings or even knocking by out a whole wall and replacing it with chicken wire!

This book is a bargain. At today's prices, a good hen will lay at least $50 worth of eggs during her lifetime (figure at least 20 dozen at $2.50 per dozen). Fresh-Air Poultry Houses will earn its keep three times over if it saves the life of just one young hen. And you are already beginning to realize that it will do far better than that, saving you far more, year after year. And, more than the money, you can look forward to greater enjoyment of your happier, healthier flock. Buy now so you can get started right away!

The Fresh-Air Revolution

Dr. Woods' principles achieved total dominance during his lifetime and many decades thereafter. Open-front poultry houses were not only the dominant type used on farms, they were the only type until the industry moved to gigantic fans at the ends of the houses to provide even more ventilation.

The principles of open-front housing were taken to remarkable extremes in some parts of the country, with excellent results. In California, chicken houses were so open that they didn't have walls at all! Just a roof. This method was used as far north as Oregon in the Fifties, and worked at least as well as conventional houses. The improved air quality made up for the increased wind chill.

While the large producers have embraced the benefits of fresh air, small-flock owners gradually reverted to under-ventilated chicken coops. This is understandable. The need to keep baby chicks warm in the beginning trains all of us to obsess over adding warmth and excluding drafts, and it's hard to do the opposite when the chicks become older. Even during the heydey of open-front housing, there was a saying that "the best chicks come out of the sorriest houses," meaning that even experienced farmers couldn't resist shutting up their houses too tightly, and that only a drafty, dilapidated house could prevent this from doing harm.

The solution is to buy this book and read it at least once a year. Every reading will teach you something new.

We're proud to be able to help you bring your flock to a greater pitch of health and activity by reprinting this excellent book.

Is This Stuff For Real?

Is the fresh-air concept for real? Does it work? Read the sample chapter. It'll convince you. And you will become even more convinced after you read the book and put its ideas into practice.

A Note on the Plans

Dr. Woods gives detailed drawing and many relevant construction details, but he does not include bills of materials or the dimensions of every piece of lumber in the chicken house. You will have no trouble if you have some experience with rough carpentry, but you may need to learn a little about basic construction if you have never built a shed before. But the issue is not whether the book gives you every detail, it's that it give you a level of understanding that will let you work the details out on your own. This is where Fresh-Air Poultry Houses excels.

How to Buy Fresh-Air Poultry Houses

You can buy your copy either online or from your local bookstore.

Order From Amazon.com

Buy From My eBay Store

Prefer eBay to Amazon? Like to get a bargain by bidding on auctions? Then you want to buy from my eBay Store. Use "Buy it Now" if you're in a hurry -- you'll still get a discount off list price. Or bid on an auction and maybe get a great price. I offer flat-rate shipping, so the more books you buy, the more you save.

Find Copies Using the AddALL Book Search Engine

AddALL will search a variety of online booksellers for the best price. Search for "Fresh-Air Poultry Houses"

Buy From Your Favorite Bookstores

While specialty books like these aren't kept on the shelves in your local bookstores, you can order a copy from them, and they'll have it in a day or two.
 

Norton Creek Classics

Fresh-Air Poultry Houses is a good example of the Norton Creek Press motto: "Most of the best books are out of print and forgotten, but we can fix that!"

Don't forget to read Norton Creek Press' other poultry books.

Return to the Norton Creek Press Home Page

Sign Up for Our Monthly Email Newsletter! Full of poultrykeeping and back-to-the-land info.

Subscribe Unsubscribe