MANAGEMENT AND PROFIT OF FOWLS. 345 
Caponizing should be performed during a warm spell and as soon as 
the sex of the fowls can be discerned, and should be preceded by fasting 
them twenty-four hours and followed by feeding immediately after the 
operation, and during twenty-four hours, at least, on soft food. The 
caponized fowls will eagerly partake of food, and will be restored to 
health in a few days if the operation has been carefully performed. In 
making poulardes, it is sufficient merely to cut across the egg-tube with 
& sharp knife. 
STATISTICS OF POULTRY-KEEPING. 
The profit of poultry-keeping is shown, in the preceding pages, in 
the figures from the New York census, and in the individual examples 
cited, to be great. Some of the gentlemen who have furnished informa- 
tion for the present article assert that no other branch of rural husbandry 
is so profitable, considering the value of investments and the care be- 
stowed. The demand for poultry and eggs, for food, is always good, 
both at home and abroad. As yet but little in this line has been fur- 
ished by this country for-exportation, the shipments in 1868 amounting 
to only 19,604 dozens eggs, valued at $5,865, and poultry, valued at 
$1,484, or $7,349 in all. 
In the Transactions of the California State Agricultural Society for 
186869, Dr. Holden states that New York City uses over four million 
dollars’ worth of eggs each year. In nine months of the year 1869, 
however, the receipt of eggs in that city averaged about 1,000 barrels ° 
per day, a barrel containing 80 dozens, which, at 30 cents per dozen, 
amounts to $24,000 per day, or $8,760,000 per annum. It is probable 
that this supply was mostly used in the city. Boston uses half as many 
as New York; and Dr. Holden states also that Cincinnati annually 
exports twenty-five millions of eggs, and Stockton, California, about 
$300,000 worth of eggs and poultry. As very slight record of the 
poultry products of this country has been made, the statistics are 
meager. From October 14, 1869, to May 6, 1870, two buyers shipped 
to New York City, from the station at Masonville, Burlington County, 
New Jersey, 393,700 pounds, or nearly 197 tons of poultry, for which 
they paid the farmers of that vicinity not less than $95,000. Every 
country town easily accessible from our large cities is visited each year 
at the proper season by poultry buyers, who transmit to the city markets 
an immense aggregate amount of the surplus products of poultry-yards. 
England is said to have a constant investment in poultry of over fifty 
millions of dollars, and she is the largest importer of eggs and poultry. 
The number of eggs yearly sent from Ireland, through Dublin, to Eng- 
land, is stated to be over seventy millions; almost equal to the average an- 
nual importation of eggs from all parts, from 1842 to 1847. During the 
succeeding five years the average annual importation was 103,000,000, 
being, in 1851, 115,526,236; and the London board of trade state the 
importations from France and Belgium, during the five years ending 
with 1857, to average 147,342,219. Thenumbers in the succeeding years, 
ending with 1861, averaged 163,581,140, the number in the last year 
being 203,315,310. The wholesale market price was eight cents per 
dozen, making the value of eggs imported that year $1,555,422. The 
quantity imported had increased in 1869 to 442,172,640, valued at 
$5,634,265, or 152 cents per dozen, and in 1870 to 430,542,240, valued at 
$5,510,400, or 154 cents per dozen. 
M. de Lavergue, a high agricultural authority in France, as quoted 
in the Transactions of the Royal Agricultural Society of England, esti- 
mated the value of eggs produced in France, in 1865, at $24,200,000, 
