Golden Nuggets

Carefulness in dressing poultry pays for the extra pains taken. The pinfeathers must all be removed. The carcass should be dressed immediately after killing. To allow the feathers to remain on for several hours will hasten decomposition. In France parts of a carcass can be purchased in market — legs, wings, heart, or any part wanted. In this country it is the whole thing or nothing. How strange that epicures who delight in the white skinned turkey or duck, should be so set against the white skinned chicken. But it seems nothing will overrule this prejudice. Neatness brings buyers. The best always goes first. Quick growth influences quick sales. The markets have a surplus of poor stuff. Poultry buyers are educated — they want the best. S It is a mistake to discard a breed on the supposition that it is not a hardy one. Hardiness can be instilled in any breed by proper housing, proper food, proper attention, and systematic breeding. The laying hen is not apt to become over fat. Nevertheless, it is a mistake to keep her on a diet of corn expecting her to manufacture eggs from that article.

Corn is no egg food. There is no better germ-slayer than an ounce of carbolic acid added to a pail of whitewash. Give the walls and ceiling of the hen house a good coating, working it in rather thick in all cracks and crevices. Fresh eggs find ready buyers and command respect. Bad eggs cause trouble. Spoiled eggs go to the tanners. Condemned eggs, though not spoiled, are sold to the factory for printing calico. Cracked eggs are often sent to the packing houses, where they are separated and canned. It seems as though nothing is so poorly marketed as poultry. If alive they are in a crowded coop, all sizes and colors. If dressed they are so often unattractive. There is no reason why dressed chickens cannot be put on the market in a more inviting condition. Buyers do not hesitate on price for a nice, clean, tasty article. Over-exercise toughens the flesh of even a young fowl. A good breast is half the race for a valuable table fowl. A hen bagging down behind is very unattractive as a carcass. The attempt to properly fatten poultry while on a free range, is to throw away time, money and good eating. In buying feed, remember that white middlings are better than the brown, that white oats are to be preferred to the black, that coarse bran is better than fine, that hulled oats are better than oats with the hulls on, that white corn is not so fattening as the yellow variety, and that Kaffir corn is an excellent grain, and should be more extensively fed. A favorite cholera cure in the West is made as follows: Red pepper, 2 ounces; powdered asafoetida, 2 ounces; carbonate of iron, 4 ounces ; powdered rhubarb, 1 ounce ; Spanish brown, 6 ounces ; sulphur, 2 ounces. The mixture is made into pellets with flour and water and given three times a day. The mixed powder is added to the soft food as a preventive, giving a table-spoonful twice a week to every two dozen fowls.

"Farm-raised stock" is not always a guarantee of health and vigor. If "farm-raised" fowls are allowed to drink from dirty pools in the barn-yard; if they are compelled to roost outdoors in all sorts of weather; if they must hunt their grain among the waste in the manure piles; we had rather take our chances from yarded stock. We like to know what our fowls eat and drink, and how comfortable they are at night. The late P. H. Jacobs once said that outside of the cold storage process, which is too expensive for the farmer, there is no mode of preserving eggs so as to keep them fresh for six months. When we use the term "fresh" we mean similar in appearance to an egg newly laid. Even where the cold storage method is used there is something to observe before the eggs are placed therein, and in any case they differ from those recently removed from the nest. An egg is a perishable article. It may not decay as rapidly as a strawberry, but sooner or later its contents change. In a paper read before the French Academy of Science, Prof. Balland, some years ago, showed by new and exhaustive analysis, the value of eggs as food and the enormous consumption of this product of the domestic hen. He showed that 25 per cent, of the egg has a nutritive value; the rest is water. Ten eggs without the shells equals just about one pound avoirdupois of meat.

During one year Paris consumed 538,000,000 eggs, or something near 125,000 dozens every day. On the basis mentioned these eggs are equivalent to the meat from 168,000 steers per annum, figures that are almost staggering, but true if science is true. The only absolutely successful way to ship iced poultry is to use crushed ice. It should be shipped in barrels that are strong, with holes in the bottom. First place a layer of excelsior on the bottom of the barrel, then a layer of crushed ice. Lay the fowls neatly together and then cover them with another layer of crushed ice. Keep this up until the barrel is filled. When the top is reached, cover the last layer of fowls with an inch and a half of ice. The finer it is crushed the better. Place over this some excelsior, and over the top burlap. Poultry shipped in this way will never bruise, and arrives in the market in excellent condition. Ice crushed as it is done for bar-rooms is the kind to use in shipping dressed poultry. The crushed ice seems to form a crust in each layer, and keeps the poultry as sweet and nice as when first shipped. The Ontario Experiment Station made a series of experiments in testing fertility of eggs, and which are interesting. They separated ten laying hens from the male, and placed the eggs in an incubator each day to test them. During the first four days 70 per cent, proved fertile, fifth day 61 per cent, sixth day 60 per cent, eight day 12 per cent, ninth day 2 per cent, and tenth day all were infertile. Then they put a male with six laying hens which had not been with a male, and tested the eggs in the same way. They found 30 per cent fertile on the third day, 42 per cent on the fourth day, fifth day 50 per cent, sixth day 60 per cent, seventh day 70 per cent, eight day 68 per cent, ninth day 70 per cent, and tenth day 74 per cent, it would seem then that nearly three-fourths of the eggs are fertile four days after the male is taken away, or a week after the male was put in. There would probably be some difference in the males however, and number of hens might have considerable influence.

GREEN FEED IN WINTER