WHERE TO LOCATE 
Suitable Soil. 
Soil is important in poultry farming; in fact it is very im- 
portant, and many failures can be traced to soil mistakes. 
Rocky and uncultivated lands must not be chosen. To locate 
on any soil which will not utilize the droppings for the pro- 
duction of green food, is to introduce a loss sufficient to turn 
success into failure. 
The ideal soil for poultry is a soil too sandy to produce 
ordinary farm crops successfully, and hence an inexpensive 
soil; but because land too sandy to be used for heavy farming 
is best for poultry, this does not mean that any cheap soil will 
do. A heavy wet clay soil worth $150 an acre for dairying is 
worth nothing for poultry. Pure sand is likewise worthless 
and nothing can be more pitiable than to see poultry confined 
in yards of wind swept sand, without a spear of anything 
green within half a mile. 
The soils that are valuable for early truck are equally valua- 
ble for poultry. Sand with a little loam, or very fine sand, 
if a few green crops are turned under to provide humus, are 
ideal poultry soils. The Norfolk Fine Sand and Norfolk Sandy 
Loam of the U. S. soil survey, are types of such soil. 
These soils absorb the droppings readily and are never 
covered with standing water. The winter snows do not stay 
on them. Crops will keep greener on them in winter than on 
clay soils three hundred miles farther south. 
The disadvantage of such soils is that they lose their fertil- 
ity by leaching. The same principles that will cause the drop- 
pings to disappear from the top of the ground will likewise 
cause them to be washed down beyond the depths of plant 
roots. This loss must be guarded against by not going to the 
extreme in selecting a light soil and may be largely overcome 
by schemes of running the poultry right among growing crops 
or by quick rotations. 
Land sloping to the southward is commonly advised for the 
purpose of getting the same advantages as are to be had in a 
sandy soil. In practice the slope of the land cannot be given 
great prominence, although, other things being equal, one 
should certainly not disregard this point. In heavy lands it 
is necessary to raise the floors and grade up around the 
houses. The quickly drained soil does away with this expense. 
Timber on the land is a disadvantage. Poultry farming in 
the woods has not been made a success. It’s the same prop- 
osition of the droppings going to waste. I know a man who 
bought a timbered tract because it was cheap and who scraped 
up the droppings to sell by the barrel to his neighbor, who 
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