No. 5. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 217 



DISPOSITION OF EGGS 



The poultryman who can successfully market his eggs after they 

 are produced will realize much more than the one who has not that 

 knack or who has not made a study of market conditions. In order 

 to get the most for the product, it is essential that the producer 

 study market conditions and requirements, and if possible, cater 

 to or meet them in as many ways as possible. Nearly all markets, 

 retail and wholesale alike, will pay a premium for a guaranteed 

 strictly fresh article, also for products which are graded according 

 to size and color and are uniform in shape. Most markets will pay 

 an increased price for eggs put up in a neat and attractive manner 

 in a substantial thirty dozen case with ordinary fillers. In some 

 instances it is found profitable to use the one dozen cartoons, and 

 by grading and guaranteeing the eggs at home, where they are pro- 

 duced, the poultryman with an extensive output can soon build up 

 a demand for his particular brand which will insure him a good 

 market at relatively high prices as compared with general market 

 quotations. 



TURKEY RAISING; HOW TO SUCCEED 



By CHARLES M. BARNITZ, Riverside, Pa. 

 (Illustrated With Lantern Slides.) 



The turkey as a domesticated fowl has had but a brief history. In- 

 deed, in comparison with the chicken, it cannot really be called do- 

 mesticated, for this big bird still nests in the wood, roosts in the 

 swaying tree-top, roams far afield to find natural turkey-food, and 

 oft, at the call of the wild turkey-cock it flees to the woods and the 

 mountains, to ancestral allegiance and life. But the chicken is a 

 domesticated antique. It has been digging up gardens and making 

 the neighbors fuss and cuss for over thirty-five centuries. 



The so-called domestication of the turkey began less than four 

 centuries ago, and while the chicken has been changed from the 

 natural to the artificial, has been converted from the little wild 

 jungle fowl into a creation radically difi'erent in habits, size, shape, 

 color, variety and productivity with the turkey, nature couldn't be 

 reversed; it could not be taken from the woods and mountains and 

 changed into a machine to meet commercial demands; it could not 

 be raised on the canary-cage plan ; and failure of men to note that it 

 is a fowl in its own class, with a distinctive physical constitution 

 that requires special food and environment, has put the United 

 States in the turkey graveyard belt, has knocked the turkey popula- 

 tion in a single decade from 6,594,095 to 3,668,708, and where for- 

 merly big, chesty, red-headed turkey gobblers "sassed" you from 

 nearly every farmyard gate, today but thirteen per cent, of our 5,579,- 

 525 farms produce turkeys, and of these, all but six, at the last cen- 

 sus, decreased in product. 



