190 ANIMAL FOOD RESOURCES OF DIFFERENT NATIONS. 



£330,000, were shipped, principally to the American' 

 Eepublic, and 370,134 dozen to Great Britain. 



Over 20,000 car-loads of live atid dressed poultry are 

 carried into New York city yearly, and 25,500,000 

 dozens of eggs go to the same market. According to 

 the best estimates, the United States produce nine 

 thousand million of eggs annually. This is a nice little 

 item for the consideration of those who call chicken 

 business — egg raising — a small thing. The American 

 farmer, however, has been shrewd enough to discover 

 that eggs pay better than birds, and he has turned 

 attention to their production and preparation in large 

 quantities for distant markets. The price paid by 

 collectors seems good. In Minnesota, on the spot 

 where fowls sold at 6s. 3d. a dozen, eggs made 5d. a 

 dozen; while at Lexington, with fowls at T^d. each, 

 eggs made as much as Id. each, and never lower than 

 4d. a dozen. 



They are packed in millboard partitions, an egg in 

 each square cell, thirty-six in each layer resting on card- 

 board sheets, one above the other, and the whole con- 

 tained in a handy sized packing-case. The counting is 

 thus made easy, and few eggs are broken. Another way 

 is to pack seventy dozen in a wooden barrel in oats. 

 These are treated as fresh meat, chilled and kept for 

 months in cooled chambers; collected at about 3d. a 

 dozen in the middle States, and thus preserved, they are 

 sold in New York at from lid. to Is. a dozen when eggs 

 are scarce ; the oats making the cost price a gain to the 

 packer. They come over 1,500 miles, and one dealer 

 was known in 1878 to have' cleared iJ3,000 by sales on 

 a rise of prices. The abolition of slavery has affected 

 the value of eggs, the free blacks keeping round their 

 little houses a good stock of hens, but even now prices 

 are sometimes remarkably high. In January, 1874, 

 eggs sold at 20d. a dozen in New York, though before 

 the month was out they fell to 6d. 



The egg trade of Chicago is assuming large propor- 

 tions. The average annual sales amount to 399,360 



