Lepperton Farmer's Ingenious System of Making Perches

Taranaki Daily News, 30 September 1940, Page 17 (Supplement)

Lepperton Farmer's Ingenious System of Making Perches

A dairy farmer in the Lepperton district who maintains several hundred head of poultry as a sideline to his main interests has his hen house divided into three sections with drop boards at the communicating doorways to facilitate cleaning right through the shed. He has not any space to spare under cover and, being of a thoughtful turn of mind as well as of an 'inventive disposition, he soon hit upon an idea that would give ample perching room for his entire flock and at the same time present no obstacle to the removal of manure. He decided to arrange the perches all two and a-half feet above the floor and all on the same level. The wood used for the perches was taken from an old building and consisted of lengths of timber slightly less than 2in. square in section and about 10ft. long. About a foot from the end of eaeh perch he drove in a 6in. nail so that the pointed end projected quite four inches. That completed the actual perch. Now for something to support them. To a nifjn of ,this farmer's nature the solution simply leaped at him. He remembered some odd pieces of conduit and small pipe stacked away in the workshop. These were immediately salvaged and cut into lengths of about three leet six inches. He then hammered each piece a foot into the ground at a point to correspond with the distance apart of

the projecting nails. The perches were then brought into the poultry house and each nail dropped into the top of its upright pipe. Thus were made five or six rows of strong perches neat to the eye and cornforting to the hens. At cleaning time the farmer simply lifted the perches off the pipes, stacked them outside and' wheeled his barrow right to where the job awaited him.