PREPARATION OF FROZEN AND DRIED EGGS. 41 
The liquid egg was collected in agateware buckets holding 20 pounds. From these 
it was transferred to the churns and then drawn by a gate valve into the 30-pound 
cans, which served as the final containers. 
It was the custom of the girls in this house to use rags of various sorts for wiping 
fingers, cups, tables, and the floor indiscriminately. The utensils were washed in 
hot water, but frequently the girls, in an excess of zeal, would wipe a comparatively 
clean piece of apparatus on a wet bacteria-laden rag, thereby very largely undoing 
the good done by washing. Fingers were constantly wet. 
The supply of incoming eggs in the shell was chilled before candling. Frequently 
there was an interval of several days between the candling and the breaking of the 
egos. Even though the eggs were kept under refrigeration, it was found better to 
break immediately after candling (see p. 40). 
The work of the candlers was fair; but too many eggs that should have been stopped 
in the candling room found their way to the breakers. This resulted, as it always 
does, in lax grading and carelessness in changing apparatus after breaking a bad egg. 
The general principles of bacterial cleanliness to be striven for in the egg breaking 
were discussed with the management, and it was decided to try several breaking 
outfits and systems of operation, using the table of eight girls asa unit. From these 
experiments there evolved a new breaking outfit. This consisted of metal racks 
supported on a traylike base and having an adjustable knife, which could readily 
be removed after a bad egg had been cracked on it. Glass sherbet cups received 
the eggs. A mechanical separator of white and yolk, which could be attached to 
the knife, was also devised. 
Until this invention the 
shell method of separating 
had been used. 
The table was also modi- 
fied in that four holes, 
each about 5 inches in 
diameter, were cut in a 
row down the middle. Be- 
low these were set the shell 
cans and into them were 
fitted galvanized-iron fun- 
nels, that the shells might 
be more accurately and 
easily guided into the cans Fic. 7.—Outfit used for egg breaking before remodeling. 
below. 
Tissue paper was provided for drying fingers, and the rags were abolished. A little 
steam sterilizer was also rigged up for experimental purposes only. 
When the girls had become somewhat accustomed to the new forms of apparatus, 
some laboratory examinations were made of the output prepared under the old and 
the new conditions. The comparative results are given in Table 20. 
EXPERIMENTAL AND COMMERCIAL SAMPLES. 
A mixture of summer firsts and seconds when broken under the cleanly conditions 
just described and when the apparatus and containers were steam sterilized gave the 
results for white and yolk shown in Table 20, Part I, experiments Nos. 519 and 518. 
The total number of bacteria is low and B. colt were not found in a 1 to 100 dilution. 
A repetition of this test, using seconds only and the old type of breaking outfit, gave 
equally as good results, as is shown in experiments Nos. 526 to 528, inclusive. 
Cracked eggs, which had been candled the day before, were also broken on the 
new tray and with sterilized apparatus. The findings on these eggs are recorded in 
experiments Nos. 520 to 525, inclusive. It will be observed that grading became 
necessary in this experiment. From the two cases broken, the routine grading prac- 
tice of this house yielded 14 poundsof a second-grade liquid egg,and between 2 and 
3 pounds of tanners’ egg. The latter included the drip which collected in the 
breaking trays. The number of bacteria in white and yolk from these checked eggs 
were not very numerous, though higher than in the sound eggs of similar grade, 
The whole egg contained some that had soft yolks, and the second-grade whole egg 
consisted almost exclusively of eggs of this variety, with some that were beginning 
to sour. The very high bacterial content of the second-grade whole egg again indi- 
cates that a study of grading was needed to supplement that of cleanliness. The bac- 
teria in the tanners’ egg were reduced in number by the amount of drip which entered 
it. The drip from clean trays and cups is very different, bacterially, from that col- 
lecting on rough and unsterilized apparatus. 
