KILLING AND PICKING CHICKENS. 



A Brief Description of the Methods Employed on Large 

 Poultry Farms and in the Establishments of Wholesale 

 Dealers — The Wages of the Workers. 



By Arthur C, Smith. 



Picking and dressing fowls and chickens, like all branches 

 of the poultry business is being rapidly reduced to a science, 

 being one of the small but necessary details of the market 

 business it has been reduced nearer to an absolute, perfect 

 science than has any other branch of the industry. 



Science has not as yet produced a substitute for the hen's 

 egg that has interested people to any extent, neither has any 

 invention produced a machine for picking and dressing 

 fowls, but the way that the most adept pickers accomplish 

 that task is certainly very machine-like. 



Pickers, as a rule, do nothing else, making this work a 

 specialty. At five cents per bird, they have been known to 

 earn nearly forty dollars per week. This speaks volumes 

 for the quick machine-like action of the picker. 



The rjrocess of Killing. 



These pickers go about their business as if it were busi- 

 ness and while there is ilo unnecessary cruelty, the dignity 

 of the chicken is assailed to annihilation. The more merci- 

 ful of the pickers begin operations by rapping- the chicken's 

 head over a smooth flat stone which stuns them and com- 

 plete the killing process either by cutting an artery inside 

 the throat, or by cutting the throat outside just back of 

 the ear-lobe. The latter method is going out of practice be- 

 cause the other leaves the head and neck looking better. 



The, braining process is increasing in practice. Some ' 

 pickers make the objection to the stunning method that if 

 the bird is hit too hard its muscles stiffen and the feathers 

 pull hard, while if not hit hard enough it does hot accom- 



