Chapter 20

WHERE TO LOCATE

That poultry should be kept on every farm to supply the farmer's own table does not permit of argument. When it comes to production for market, I believe there are some sections where it costs more to produce and market poultry and eggs than is received for the product when sold. For illustration: On a farm which is twenty miles from town and where grain cannot be profitably grown, the cost of teaming grain from the railroad station and of sending the eggs to market as frequently as is necessary to have a wholesome product, would certainly eat up all possible profits.

The farmer thus located would find a more profitable use for his time in some industry where the raw material is near at hand and the product needs less frequent marketing.

Some Poultry Geography.

When we are discussing poultry on the general farm, the problem of location is not to be taken into consideration, save to the extent that there are a few localities where food cost is so high or marketing facilities so poor as to make even the usual farm surplus unprofitable.

The map on page 45 shows the intensity of egg production and also indicates the location of the more important localities where poultry plants have succeeded. The map on page 47 shows the quality of eggs coming from various sections, which indicates pretty closely the general development of the poultry industry. These indications, however, are of little value in locating a poultry plant, for they refer to the poultry product on the general farm, and are a matter of the number and general intelligence of farmers, rather that a sign of the suitability of the locality for the poultry industry.

For purposes of discussion, I have divided the United States into seven sections as shown by the dotted lines on the second map.

Section 1 is the North Woods and too cold and remote for the poultry business.

Section 2 includes the great West, of which an adequate discussion is out of the question. Of course, the great majority of this area is too remote from markets for poultry production. The locations around the big cities in this section are excellent for poultry farming, as they are so far removed from the great farm region that their bulk of imported eggs are of necessity somewhat stale. California is good chicken country. The Puget Sound country is rather too damp. In the interior western regions the chicken business has not done well, chiefly because the atmosphere is too dry for the methods of artificial incubation attempted.

Section 3 is the great granary of the world. It is also the home of three-fourths of the country's poultry crop. It is a region of corn, cattle and hogs. Such a country will produce poultry in a very inexpensive manner. But it is not the region for special poultry farms. In the northern portion of this tract, we find a heavy housing expense and much winter labor necessary. It is a region of high priced lands and labor, and low prices for poultry products.

Even the large cities in this region offer little in the way of demand for high grade poultry products. This is because they are so abundantly surrounded with farms that all produce is moderately fresh and plentiful. There are no successful poultry farms in this section west of the Mississippi. It is the natural location of extensive rather than intensive branches of agriculture. The only type of commercial poultry farming that could succeed in any portion of this section would be a large community of producers who could ship their products out regularly in carload lots. Such development could only take place in the southern portion of this region, for the housing expense is too great for the north. At best the distance from market is a disadvantage, for the rate on eggs just about equals the rate on the quantity of grain necessary to produce them. The added time of shipment is something of a drawback, though in refrigerator cars this is not serious. After the establishment of poultry communities becomes more common, the Oklahoma and Texas region will become available for this purpose, but they must be established in full swing at the start, for a few isolated poultrymen have no chance at all in this section, for they cannot sell their product to advantage.

Section 4. This region, extending from the Ozarks to Eastern Tennessee, is one of the very best poultry sections. The climate is such that green food is available winter and summer, and the expense of housing and winter labor is reasonable. This section is still in the corn growing region. The question is almost always one of railroad facilities to get the product out. All poultry farms in this section must grow their own grain or buy it of their immediate neighbors. It will not pay to ship grain into this region.

When near shipping facilities, individual poultry farms in Section 4 have a good chance of success, especially east of the Mississippi. This is the most favorable region in the country for the establishment of poultry communities that are to grow their own grain. Such poultry farms will not be expected to confine their attention as exclusively to the business as those in the section where it is profitable to import the grain.

Section 5 is the non-grain growing region of the South. It at present produces little poultry. The climate is all right for the purpose, but the freight rates on grain from the West are high and likewise the freight service and freight rates to the final market are excessive. Under these conditions poultry farming will not pay except in a few localities as in Florida, where there is a high class local market due to the popular resorts. If grain could be profitably grown in this section the same type of poultry farming that prevails in Section 4 would be advisable. Now, grain can be grown in the cotton belt of the South, and many Yankee farmers are making good money doing it. But when grown it is liable to be worth more to feed mules than to feed chickens.

Section 6 is the "Down East" section of dense population. The land for the most part is rocky, wooded and hilly. The climate and nature of the soil are against the economical production of poultry, but the grain can be profitably fed, and as the markets are the best in the country, commercial poultry farming has gained quite a foothold. If a man is already located in this section and wishes to go into the poultry business I would by all means say, "Go ahead," but I would not advise an outsider looking for a location to come here, for the next section has several advantages.

Section 7 is the best poultry farming district in the United States, either for the individual poultry plant or for the community of poultry growers. The reasons for this are:

First: The soil is of a sandy nature and excellent land for poultry farming can be had at a low price.

Second: The climate is much more favorable than farther north or farther inland.

Third: Grain rates from the West are very reasonable.

Fourth: The best market in the country--New York City--is within easy shipping distance.

The type of poultry farming here to be recommended, like that of Section 6, is one in which imported grain is fed. The fertility of this grain, going back on the light soil, is used to grow the green food required by the hens, and, in addition, may be used in a rotation system for growing truck. It will not pay to grow any quantity of grain. Section 7, because of its advantages over Section 6 in climate and the availability of large tracts of suitable land, is a much better location for the poultry community. Over Section 4, which is the second best region for this purpose, it has the advantage of nearness to markets. The climatic advantage of Sections 4 and 7 are about on a par. The chief distinction is the matter of growing grain or importing it. If you are to grow your grain, using poultry as a means of marketing it, Section 4 is the best locality. If you are to buy grain, Section 7 is the place.

The boundaries of Section 7 are not arbitrary and should be noted carefully. The line runs from Mattawan, New Jersey, across to the main line of the Pennsylvania and down this to Washington. To the north and west of this, the soils are heavy clays which are wet, cold, slushy and easily befouled. Likewise, the line on the south is distinctly marked by the Norfolk and Western Railway and is a matter of freight rates on grain. Norfolk gets a rate of sixteen and a half cents from Chicago; a couple of hundred miles south, the rate is about twice as much. Cheaper grain rates would of course extend this belt on down the coast where the climate is even more favorable.

Chicken Climate.

Climate is a big figure in the cost of poultry production. Every day that water is frozen in winter means increased labor and decreased egg yield. Mild winters means cheap houses, cheap labor, cheap feed (a large proportion of green food), an earlier chick season, which, together with the mild weather and green feed, mean a large proportion of the egg yield at the season when eggs are high in price.

The American poultry editor wastes a great deal of ink explaining why the Australian egg records of 175 eggs per hen, cannot be so, because in this country, the hens at the Maine station only averaged 125. The Maine Experiment Station lies buried in a snow drift for about five months of the year. The Australian station has a winter climate equal to that of New Orleans. The Australian records do not go below thirty eggs per day per hundred hens at any time during the year. Our New York and New England records run down anywhere from one to ten eggs per day per hundred hens. The following table will show the effect of the climate upon the distribution of the egg yield throughout the year. The records at New York are from a large number of hens of several different flocks and probably represent a normal distribution of the egg yield for that section. The Kansas and Arkansas lists are taken from the record of small flocks and are not very reliable. The fourth column gives the Australian records with the months transferred on account of being in the southern hemisphere. The last column gives the railroad shipments from a division of the N.C. & St. L. railroad in Western Tennessee:

Column Headings: NY--Central New York per hen per day KS--Kansas Ex. Station per hen per day AR--Arkansas Ex. Station per hen per day AU--Australian Laying Contest per hen per day NH--Shipments from New Hampshire egg farm TN--Shipments from Western Tennessee

NY KS AR AU NH TN January .21 .25 .32 .51 26 1509 February .26 .22 .30 .66 41 1520 March .43 .60 .62 .67 66 2407 April .56 .52 .38 .61 83 1775 May .59 .57 .44 .53 81 1650 June .50 .46 .42 .45 61 1131 July .44 .43 .34 .43 58 878 August .37 .32 .38 .41 54 422 September .26 .28 .29 .29 24 100 October .17 .13 .22 .31 3 541 November .08 .06 .18 .31 2 703 December .14 .25 .15 .40 11 1150

An equable climate the year round is the best for the chicken business. The California coast is fairly equable in temperature, but its winter rains and summer drouth are against it. The Atlantic coast south of New York is fairly good, probably the best the country affords. The most southern portions will be rather too hot in summer, which will result in a small August and September egg yield. Probably the region around Norfolk is, all considered, the best poultry climate the country affords.

Suitable Soil.

Soil is important in poultry farming; in fact it is very important, 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 production 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 valuable 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 fertility by leaching. The same principles that will cause the droppings 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 proposition 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 used them to fertilize his cabbage patch and in turn sold the poultryman cabbages to feed his hens, at 5 cents a head. Of course, this man failed, as does practically every man who attempts to scrape dropping boards and carry poultry manure around in baskets, instead of using it where it falls.

There is little to be said in favor of uncleared land for the poultry business, but there is something that can be said in favor of the poultry business for uncleared land. A man who buys a timbered land for trucking can get no income whatever the first year, but the poultryman can begin his operations in the woods, clearing the land while he is raising a crop of chickens on it. The coops may be placed in the cleared streak and most of the droppings utilized. In fact, the plan of a streak of timber alongside the houses is not bad for a permanent arrangement--the birds certainly enjoy the shade. But the shade of growing crops is the most profitable kind for poultry.

Marketing--Transportation.

The possibilities of working up a local trade of high grade eggs at fancy prices varies greatly with the locality. Large cities and wealthy people are essentials. Other than this the principal distinctions are that regions where a general surplus of eggs are produced offer little chance for a fancy trade. Where the great bulk of eggs are imported fancy trade is more feasible. St. Louis is the smallest western city that supports anything like a fancy trade in eggs and there it is only on a small scale. Minneapolis, Omaha, etc., would not pay 3 cents premium for the best eggs produced, but cities of the same size east of the Appalachians and especially in New England, will pay a good premium. The Far West or the mountain districts will pay up better than the Mississippi Valley. The South will pay a little better than the upper Mississippi Valley, but has few cities of sufficient size to make such markets abundant. The Southerner has little regard for quality in produce and the most aristocratic people consume eggs regularly that the wife of a Connecticut factory hand wouldn't have in the house. The egg farmer who expects to sell locally had best not locate south of Washington or west of Pittsburg, unless he goes to the Pacific Coast.

Where marketing is not done by wagon the subject of railroad transportation is practically identical with the question of marketing. It is the cost in freight service and freight rates that count. The proposition of transportation, especially for the grain buying poultry farm, catches us coming and going and both must be considered.

A poultry farm in Section 7 will buy one hundred pounds of feed per year per hen and market one-third of a case of eggs. On this basis the grain rate from Chicago or St. Louis and the egg rate to New York must be balanced against each other. Don't take these things for granted. Look them up.

Jamesburg and Freehold, two New Jersey towns ten miles apart and equi-distant and with equal freight rates from New York, might seem to the uninitiated as equally well situated to poultry farming. We will suppose two men bought forty-acre farms of equal quality and equi-distant from the railroad stations at these two towns. Suppose, further, they each kept five thousand hens. Jamesburg is on a Philadelphia-New York line of the Pennsylvania and its Chicago grain rate is the same as that of New York, namely: 19-1/2 cents per hundred. Freehold is on a branch line; its rate is 24-1/2 cents. In a year the difference amounts to $250. Figured at six per cent. interest, the land at Jamesburg is worth just about one hundred dollars an acre more than that at Freehold.

Lumber rates or local lumber prices should also be taken into consideration. Whether one plans to ship his product out by express or freight will, of course, be an important consideration in deciding the location.

As a general thing, the individual poultry farmer will, for shipping his product, use express east of Buffalo and north of Norfolk. The poultry community could use freight in these same regions and get as good or better service than by express.

The location in relation to the railroad station is equally important to the freight rate. Besides heavy hauling frequent trips will be necessary in marketing eggs. These on the larger farms will be daily or at least semi-weekly. On the heavy hauling alone, at 25 cents per ton mile, distance from the railroad will figure up 1-1/4 cents per hen which, on the basis of the previous illustration, would make a difference of twenty-five dollars per acre for every mile of distance from the station. One of the most successful poultry farms I know is right along the railroad and has an elevator which handles the grain from the cars and later dumps it into the feed wagons without its ever being touched by hand. The labor saving in this counts up rapidly.

The poultry community can have its own elevator and the grain can be sold to the farmer to be delivered directly into the hoppers in his field with but a single loading into a wagon.

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 artificial 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 because 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 premises 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 keeping in relation to the general business of farming. These figures 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 to all farm wealth, but this is because more agricultural wealth is produced in Iowa than in all the "Down East" states.

Table showing the development of the poultry industry in the various states, according to the returns of the census of 1900:

No. of Percentage of No. of Farm value eggs per farm wealth eggs of eggs per capita earned by per hen dozen States poultry

Alabama 124 4.9 48 9.7 cents Arizona 80 4.5 60 19.9 Arkansas 235 6.8 58 9.1 California 197 5.4 74 15.8 Colorado 127 5.4 71 15.0 Connecticut 105 11.3 89 19.1 Delaware 231 14.7 68 13.7 Florida 96 8.2 46 13.1 Georgia 156 4.4 41 10.4 Idaho 213 5.0 67 16.2 Indiana 338 10.0 77 10.5 Iowa 536 7.4 64 10.1 Illinois 215 3.7 62 10.3 Kansas 597 8.2 73 9.9 Kentucky 198 8.3 62 9.8 Louisiana 111 4.0 40 10.0 Maine 233 11.0 100 15.3 Maryland 126 10.4 71 12.6 Massachusetts 56 11.7 96 19.9 Michigan 270 9.7 82 11.2 Minnesota 296 5.8 67 10.5 Mississippi 144 4.7 43 9.9 Missouri 291 11.6 68 9.8 Montana 148 4.3 67 21.0 Nebraska 463 6.1 66 9.9 Nevada 68 3.7 71 20.8 New Hampshire 238 11.5 96 17.3 New Jersey 76 12.0 72 16.2 New Mexico 45 2.7 65 18.7 New York 102 7.1 83 13.9 North Carolina 112 5.7 55 10.2 North Dakota 249 2.6 64 10.5 Ohio 265 9.6 77 11.2 Oklahoma 315 6.4 60 9.3 Oregon 224 6.2 72 15.1 Pennsylvania 112 10.8 75 13.5 Rhode Island 90 19.7 77 20.4 South Carolina 80 4.0 41 10.3 South Dakota 502 5.2 68 10.0 Tennessee 189 8.4 61 9.8 Texas 228 4.8 52 8.0 Utah 146 5.1 76 12.5 Vermont 219 7.5 94 15.3 Virginia 165 8.9 67 11.1 Washington 171 7.1 74 16.8 West Virginia 216 10.2 74 10.9 Wisconsin 268 7.1 68 10.5 Wyoming 121 2.4 79 17.4 Entire U.S. 205 7.4 65 11.1