WHERE TO LOCATE 
Availability of Water. 
One more point to be considered in location is water. 
The labor of watering poultry by carrying water in buckets 
is tremendous and not to be considered on any up-to-date 
poultry plant. Watering must be accomplished by some arti- 
ficial piping system or from spring-fed brooks. The more 
length of flowing streams on a piece of land, provided the 
adjacent ground is dry, the more value the property has for 
poultry. Two spring-fed brooks crossing a forty-acre tract so 
as to give a half mile of running water, or a full mile of 
houses, would water five thousand hens without labor. This 
would mean an annual saving of at least one man’s time as 
against hand watering, or a matter of a thousand dollars or 
more in the cost of installation of a watering system. 
If running water cannot be had the next best thing is to 
get land with water near the surface which may be tapped 
with sand points. If one must go deep for water a large flow 
is essential so that one power pump may easily supply 
sufficient water for the plant. 
The land should lay in a gentle slope so that water may 
be run over the entire surface by gravity. Hilly lands are a 
nuisance in poultry keeping and raise the expense at every 
turn. 
A Few Statistics. 
The following table does not bear directly upon the poultry- 
man’s choice of a location, but is inserted here becauce of its 
general interest in showing the poultry development of the 
country. 
It will be noted that the egg production per hen is very low 
in the Southern States. This may seem at variance with my 
previous statements. The poor poultry keeping of the South 
is a fault of the industrial conditions, not of the climate. 
Chickens on the Southern farm simply live around the prem- 
ises as do rats or English sparrows. No grain is grown; 
there are no feed lots to run to, no measures are taken to 
keep down vermin, and no protection is provided from wind 
and rain. In the North chickens could not exist with such 
treatment. 
The figures given showing the relation between the poultry 
and total agricultural wealth is the best way that can be 
found to express statistically the importance of poultry keep- 
ing in relation to the general business of farming. These fig- 
ures should not be confused with the distribution of the 
actual volume of poultry products. Iowa, the greatest poultry 
producing state, shows only a moderate proportion of poultry 
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