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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account