Poultry Problems and Profits. 



433 



for shipment. The birds are dry picked. Dry-picking is always 

 to be preferred when preparing fowls for market. As most peo- 

 ple do not understand the dry-picking method, nor know how to 

 kill the chickens by sticking, it will, as a rule, be found best to sell 

 the fowls on foot. If birds picked other than by the dry process, 

 are torn in picking and are not properly preserved and plumped, 

 the sale is sure to prove a disappointment. 



Sell the surplus cockerels. You can not afford to keep them 

 all summer "simply for the sake of their society," as the price gen- 

 erally decreases with the added age and weight of the bird. Some 

 have found it profitable to convert the cockerels of the heavy 

 breeds into capons. On this subject, R. T. Colborn, a Missouri 

 poultry raiser, writes, "I have no difficulty in raising these birds, 

 and find a ready market at home, men coming to me from Chicago 

 and paying as much as $1.04 per head. By the introduction of 

 caponizing the mischief-making cockerel is transformed into a 



w 



A Double House, each side opening into a separate pen. The front of this House is 

 covered with poultry wire, and it is arrariged so that a canvas can be at- 

 tached and lowered as siding, for protection In stormy weather. 



(See page 420). 



tranquil, majestic fowl, moving at leisure about the yard and get- 

 ting fatter and heavier every day. As a seller he is the peer of any 

 fowl, yielding the greatest returns to the poultry raiser, and having 

 been changed by a process so simple that anyone equipped with the 

 proper tools can do it." 



The following on the subject of care and marketing of eggs is 

 contributed by the manager of one of the largest commission 

 companies in Missouri : "As every one knows, the egg production 

 of this state amounts to millions of dollars annually, and all the 

 writers and institutes urge a larger production; but we who buy 

 and sell these eggs believe that if the farmers would take better 

 care of what they now produce, it would make them more money 

 than to enlarge the production. With most farmers 'an egg is an 

 egg,' but when it comes to the sale of them to the people who eat 



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