Fresh Air or Bust To stay healthy, your chickens need plenty of ventilation--probably more than they're getting today. This was discovered over 100 years ago, but has been largely forgotten.

Instead, today's small-flock housing tends to be dank, dark, and smelly. Chickens, like miners' canaries, are easily harmed by poor air quality. Wet litter breeds disease, and darkness forces chickens, like parrots, to be artificially inactive. "Dank, dark, and smelly" is a deadly combination

Closed chicken houses are so harmful that knocking out a wall can cause an immediate improvement, even in winter. Chickens, after all, have a thick coat of feathers to keep them warm, but are vulnerable to poor air quality and pathogens in the litter; and their unwillingness to eat in the dark means they can starve in the midst of plenty.

Fresh-Air Poultry Houses was written by Dr. Prince T. Woods, a noted poultry health expert. Dr. Woods describes not only his own poultry houses, but those of many other poultrykeepers, giving the book a breadth of experience that makes it a unique resource. This 1924 book is old-fashioned and a little eccentric, but in a good way.

Fresh-Air Poultry Houses is volume 2 of the Norton Creek Classics series. See http: //www.nortoncreekpress.com for these practical, best-of-breed poultry books. It's a good example of our motto: "Most of the best books are out of print and forgotten, but we can fix that "