l68 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Jan., 



Speaker said, to handling the bird that you Hke, but you evi- 

 dently like the bird that will meet your requirements. 



The speaker also spoke of the " cramming " process for 

 the high-grade market poultry. We have a fattening house 

 there and we have room for 750 birds. We put in perhaps 250 

 birds each week and the birds gain from two to six pounds. 

 We ship to some of the high-grade clubs in the Adirondacks, 

 also have a very nice college trade at Columbia University. 

 We are buying at this time poultry that costs us ten cents a 

 pound alive. We put it in the crate for three weeks and it 

 gains about 50 per cent, in live weight, and we sell it dressed 

 at 20 to 22 cents a pound. The demand is far in excess of the 

 supply. I fully concur with what the gentleman said in this : 

 that that is the method by which our high-grade market poultry 

 is all to be finished in the future. It takes four men a little over 

 an hour to feed that stock with our two cramming machines. 

 Possibly some of you don't know what these machines are. 

 There is a receptacle in which the food is placed after being 

 finely ground and mixed with milk — a cylinder in which there 

 is a plunger, a long tube which is inserted in the bird's throat, 

 and by the movement of a lever the food is forced into the crop. 

 That cramming process is used twice a day, in the morning and 

 at night. Two men, one to hand the birds from the crate, the 

 other to operate the machine, will cram from 300 to 400 birds 

 in an hour. There is not a doubt that this is the highest grade 

 of market poultry, and I believe that we of New England and 

 the Middle States have got to come to it, as the west is now 

 producing such high-grade market poultry at approximately 

 the same prices received for eastern stuff. 



Now, just a word regarding turkeys. The time was, within 

 the memory of many of the gentlemen of this audience, when 

 every New England farm had its flock of turkeys, but you 

 can't raise them today very successfully. Why? Because of 

 that fearful disease that we term " blackhead." It swept New 

 England and decimated the flocks, and it is almost impossible 



