.92 BROILERS AND ROASTERS. 



For such the instructions which follow are a help ; but to 

 really learn how to do such work well and expeditiously 

 .most people need personal instruction, and for one who 

 Ihas to do it in his business, it is worth while to go and 

 work for a week or two in an establishment where poultry 

 is dressed by the thousands. 



54. Methods of Picking. — There are two methods 

 of picking fowls — dry picking, in which the feathers are 

 removed dry, after the bird has been bled and stunned, 

 while the fowl is dying; and scalding, in which, after life 

 is extinct, the bird is immersed in scalding, not boiling, 

 water just enough to steam and loosen the feathers, which 

 -are then much more easily removed than by dry picking. 

 A properly scalded fowl when picked presents as attract- 

 ive a carcass as a dry picked one, but while it is easier to 

 remove the feathers when the scalding is done right, so 

 much of the scalding is done wrong that in the markets 

 where choice poultry brings best prices, scalding is in dis- 

 repute, and the best of scalded poultry usually sells a few 

 cents, two or three, below dry picked poultry of the same 

 .quality at wholesale. I am inclined to doubt that the 

 retailers give the difference to their customers. The 

 grower dressing stock for eastern markets should dry pick 

 it. Unless a grower is expert in scalding he will find it 

 to his advantage to dry pick for any market, for there is 

 much less danger of his making his poultry look bad. 



55. Methods of Killing. — Fowls that are to be 

 scalded and sold with head off may be killed by cutting off 

 the head with a hatchet — the common way through the 

 larger part of the country. If to be sold, as in most large 

 markets, with head on, they must be killed by bleeding, 



