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.