Walker Lake bulletin. (Hawthorne, Nev.) 1883-1926, 1895-01-16
A NEW DEPARTURE.
PetaIuma's Annual Receipts
From Butter and Eggs.
COOPERATIVE PLAN OF HANDLING.
A Few Hints That May Prove Valuable to
Farmers In Other Localities In
California.

In one of his trips among the farmers
of California the writer visited sec
ton of low hills between the Sonoma
Valley and the coast. This is about
fifty miles northwest from San Fran
cisco. A late rain and warm days had
made the hills green, given grass
flavor to the butter and set all the hens
cackling.
Petaluma is a town of about 4, 900
people, and its annual cash receipts
for butter, eggs and fruit exceed $2.-
900, 900. OF this, about one-third is
from eggs, and gross returns can be
fairly estimated at two dollars per hen
annually. They report that one mans
time is needed to care for 800 hens
properly. Some of them have several
thousand, divided into colonies Of 90
to 100 birds. Each colony has its own
house. which is generally built on run
ners, so as to be easily moved, by a
team, from place to place. The stand
ard size is by 8 with 8 feet posts
Roosts run lengthwise and are suspend
ed by wires. so as to avoid danger from
lice crawling from the side of the
building. They move these about the
pastures and take care to build the frame
work outside, so that they can readily
paint the inside often with crude
petroleum and carbolic acid as pre-
ventive of disease. The main object in
small colonies and in moving the
houses is to prevent contagious disease
spreading. They study carefully to
feed ration balanced for egg produc-
ton. Most of them have mills for
cutting fresh bone and waste meat from
the butcher shops. Scraps from
slaughter houses, shells from the sea-
side, cayenne pepper, bran, middlings
and wheat are handled in very large
quantities.
The Two Rock grange is located eight
miles in the county, occupies its own
hall and is model of cooperative en-
terprise. Every go days they order
their regular supply of goods in original
packages from their wholesale houses
in the city, and report savings ranging
from 90 to 80 per cent
Now the grange is establishing CO.
operative plant for handling butter
and eggs. They will put in modern
creamery fixtures with store room for
the egg business. Within three miles
of the point selected they can secure
the milk of / 200 COWS, and it is likely
that there are about 30. 200 chickens in
the same territory. Every morning
when the milk wagon starts for the
creamery it will take yesterdays eggs
along. All tine large white eggs will
be put in cases by themselves, oonspic-
uously marked with the company's
fancy brand. After dinner the wagon
will take the butter and eggs down to
Petaluma, to be shipped on the boat
so as to reach San Francisco in time for
next mornings market. AS the dealer
can warrant that everyone of those eggs
was laid day before yesterday, they
will command an extra fancy price.
When the wagon returns it will bring
mail for all patrons. fresh meat from
the butcher, small orders from town
and bones and scraps from the slaugh-
ter house.
Next morning when the churn starts,
these scraps and bones will be run
through the bone mill and vat of the
first skinned milk that comes from
the separator will be run into curds, so
that the milk wagons can take home
feed for the little chicks as well as the
older birds. Instead of carrying home
milk for pigs and calves they will wash
and scald the cans at the creamery and
bring the pigs and calves there to be
raised. The skim milk calf of the
olden time used to get late breakfast
of sweet milk and an early supper of
mornings milk that had now turned
sour. He grew up slab-sided and spin
dle-shanked, looking like a pumpkin
seed on four pins. Here they will have
a specialist to raise the young stock.
who will give the little ones at least
three feeds day of warm sweet milk
and the larger ones a little grain to
brace them up.
1t can be fairly estimated that an
expert operator on churn and separator
can get 10 per cent. more butter from
the milk than the farmers now do from
setting in open pans, and market quo
tations show 10 per cent. gain in price
for product of the new system. That
means gain of 20 per cent. ON the
butter alone. or that four cows in the
new way will equal five in the old.
William Hill, leading banker of their
town. says that we'll equipped dairy
ranches are worth about $3.50 for every
COW they will carry. On that basis a
S25, 900 investment can be increased to
equal one of $33, 900 by the 81, 900 that
it will cost to equip such dairy with
the best of modern appliances.
The gain in eggs will be similar.
At the present time great many are
traded to stores in town. Now store
eggs are regularly quoted cents less
than ranch eggs. and these fancy cream
cry eggs will be worth at least cents
above ordinary ranch eggs. This will
n Gain of aboY,t tho co,ra ,,~o