428 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



a chain suspended from a traveling pulley. By machinery the animal is 

 then h'oisted until the head clears the floor and is carried along, suspended 

 from an overhead track, until it reaches the '•sticker.'" Here a man 

 cuts the throat, doing about four hundred and twenty five an hour. Then 

 begins a journey of dismemberment for the carcass, which passes through 

 a line of men each with a specific work to do on the carcass or entrails, 

 until the cooler is reached. So systematically is the work of dressing 

 the carcass done that miscuts or injuries to any animals or part can at 

 once be traced to the employe doing the damage. This is the case with 

 all the animals slaughtered, no matter whether cattle, sheep or swine. 



Methods with hogs. The hogs are driven into slaughter pens and 

 run beneath hoisting wheels ten feet in diameter, operated by machinery. 

 In the pen a shackler places a chain about the hind leg of a hog and 

 hooks him to 'one of six chains hanging at equal distances apart from the 

 rim of the hoisting wheel. The animal is hauled up by the slow revo- 

 lution of the wheel and descends on the opposite side, when the chain 

 about the leg catches on a "sticking bar," which liberates\ the hog from 

 the wheel and slides him onto a rail, from which, by gravity, he grad- 

 ually moves into the sticking pen. The hogs here come into the hands 

 of a man who. with a knife, sticks about ten a minute. From the 

 sticker they pass on to the scalding vat, into which they are dropped 

 free of the shackles. T^he bristles on the hams, shoulders and back are 

 removed by hand, after which :he carcass is carried up through an auto- 

 matic hog-scraping machine. After scraping, the body is beheaded, fol- 

 lowing which comes the cleaning of entrails, general dressing and plac- 

 ing in the cooler. 



Methods with sheep. In the sheep pens boys fasten a chain to the 

 hind legs of two sheep, which is attached to a triangular link and hooked 

 into a hoisting chain, which is raised and lowered by electricity. The 

 bolster transfers the sheep to a traveling pulley on a track slightly in- 

 clined downward, along which they move to the sticker, who cuts the 

 throats of from five hundred to six hundred per hour. The sheep pass 

 beyond the sticker to others, who take off the skin and head, remove the 

 entrails, and do the other work necessary to placing the carcass in 

 the cooler. In the sheep house they have what is called an operating 

 ring, which is a line of racks on which tne carcasses are hung while 

 being dressed. Operators travel about the ring in regular order and com 

 plete the work of dressing, after which the carcasses are placed in the 



All slaughtered animals are inspected during the process of kill- 

 ing and dressing by a representative of the Bureau of Animal Industry. 

 They are also inspected and officially tagged in the cooler. 



Cold storage. The large packing houses have immense cold storage 

 plants, in which thousands of carcasses can be hung on overhead hooks. 

 These cold rooms are arranged in sections, with varying degrees of 

 temperature. The warm carcass is placed in a room only moderately 

 cold, where it remains for some hours to chill, after which it is moved 

 into a room having a lower temperature, and finally to one with a tem- 

 perature of about 38 degrees Fahrenheit. One of the packing house 

 companies of Chicago states in a circular letter that its coolers hold 

 about 13.340 sides of beef. 17,000 hogs, and many thousand sheep. 



