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