384 THE BEGINNER IN POULTRY 



ways a drug. Spring chickens should not weigh less 

 than one pound, and this weight only very early ; as 

 soon as chickens are in fair supply, nothing less than 

 one-and-one-half pound weights will find favor. Since 

 Long Island can send young ducks, full grown, very early 

 in the season, and ships them by the ten thousands, it is 

 but folly for any other shippers to try to meet this com- 

 petition with stock less than the best and of full size or 

 nearly so. " There is no call whatever for stock weigh- 

 ing less than 3 and 4 pounds each." 



In all handling, extreme care must be taken to avoid 

 bruising or defacing the carcass. A cardinal point, pre- 

 paratory to packing, is to get rid of the animal heat. A 

 process called " plumping " finishes the preparation of 

 scalded stock. It consists of dipping the birds into hot 

 and cold water alternately. But even with this, there 

 is a right way. The first dip is into water just under 

 the boiling point, for about two seconds. The cooling 

 from this must be gradual, lest the drain of blood be 

 stopped short. Hence, cool water, of natural tempera- 

 ture, follows the hot dip, for a twenty-minute bath. If 

 to be packed in ice for warm weather shipment, a sec- 

 ond, cooler bath of an hour or less follows the first, and 

 the ice-water bath of eight to ten hours follows and 

 completes the process. Is it any wonder that cold-stored 

 poultry lacks flavor, when it has all this soaking at the 

 very start ? 



Poultry or sugar barrels are used for shipping this 

 class of goods, the latter being carefully washed to re- 

 move traces of sugar. The first layer (bottom) is of 

 ice, then poultry and ice alternately till the barrel is 

 almost full. A piece of burlap and a final layer of 



