TURKEY RAISING 



nually just before Thanksgiving and also before Christ- 

 mas a train known as the Turkey Special is made up at 

 Morristown, Tenn., and rushed direct from there to 

 Jersey City as quickly as possible. This train usually 

 consists of a number of cars of live poultry, most of 

 which are turkeys, together with some cars of dressed 

 poultry. In shipping the turkeys, both the especially con- 

 structed live poultry transportation company cars and 

 ordinary stock cars are utilized. 



The live poultry transportation cars are manufactured 

 for the purpose of shipping live fowls. These cars con- 

 sist of a series of cages built up on each side of the car 

 with an aisle between and with a feed room in the center. 

 Each car contains 128 cages. Since they are built for 

 chickens they are about 12 inches high and do not allow 

 the turkeys to stand erect unless the flooring between two 

 cages is taken out and this is not a usual practice. Each 

 cage will hold from 7 to 12 turkeys according to their 

 size and as a rule about 1,200 live turkeys can be loaded 

 in a car. The minimum weight for which the shipper 

 must pay in using one of these cars is 18,000 pounds and 

 it is difficult to load this weight of turkeys in a car. 

 When stock cars are used, ordinary wooden shipping 

 cages or coops are employed and are piled one on top of 

 another. These wooden coops are usually deeper than 

 the coops in the live poultry transportation cars with the 

 result that not as many coops can be put in nor as many 

 turkeys shipped in one of these cars. However, the birds 



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