The Owosso times. (Owosso, Mich.) 1897-1926, 1908-06-12


The cold storage egg is of cours,
"hen fruit" Not many years ago /
was proclaimed that process haC
been discovered whereby fresh egg
could be manufactured like woodeI
nutmegs, but these egg machinist.
met the same fate as the patent rain
makers who went to the western rain
less regions with their dynamite bal
looms to make thunderstorms to order
The ben lays the cold storage egg
however distant 1t seems to be re
moved from its primordial ancestor.
In the cheap season hucksters gather
them from the farms; poultrymer
haul them to the railroad stations
grocerymen, who trade them in, de
liver them f. o. b., and all together the
Grated eggs are freighted to wholesale
houses and the trust" Now, If these
millions of eggs were all good or the
men who handle them were all careful
or honest the cold storage eggs would
be of better quality and the prejudice
against them not so great. But listen!
Farmers, as a rule, are not very par
ticular about eggs. Few of them have
good henhouses and nesting places
The result is the hens hatch and lay
in any old place.
They lay in the haymow, next in
heat to hades on hot day; they drop
their eggs under the roosts and in the
cow stables; they steal their nests
under the hogpens and in many other
places where heat and filth soon rob
them of their beauty and sweetness.
Eggs found in stolen nests are often
too old to vote. The farmer always
leaves nest egg to lure the speckled
hen back. 1t may be changed the next
day. or it may serve in its honorable
capacity for three months before it
finds its way to an epicure's table in
the city as ''fresh stock laid while you
wait" How we'll we remember the
day on the farm when we found a
nest with ten dozens. of eggs in the
corner of the haymow!
If one hen laid them all they were
the product Of $50 hard days work
that is, if she laid regularly every other
day, but the best type hen sweats to
lay 200 year.
How we exulted one day when we
spied a half bushel of eggs under the
old hogpen.
We squeezed under and hauled them
out, and grandma sold them to the
huckstsr for 10 cents a dozen. But,
whisper 1t softly, the hens had been
hat, hing and rehatching under that
pigllen through all the ages of man.
You might think all the eggs shipped
from modern poultry plant were
fresh. Let me lift the lid. There are
great many castoff eggs at poultry
plants. Some set as high as 100000
eggs a season. In some seasons from
30 to 60 per cent do not hatch After
the large incubators are running five
days the eggs are tested by passing
them before a strong light. All eggs
that do not have a bloody-like spider
In them are rejected This spider is
the live germ, and you can follow up
its development till toward the twenty
first day, when you can see the chick
en- wiggle in the shell.
On the fifteenth there is another test.
The eggs rejected are the following:
Clear or infertile, with a red streak
or ruptured blood vessel, black spot
or dead germ, cracked and rotten. At
the end of the hatch among those left
are the eggs with dead chicks in them.
Now you can see how much latitude
a blackleg in the egg business has for
trickery.
The infertile eggs are clear, and one
can hardly distinguish them from fresh
eggs. Bakers often use them in their
manufacture of wholesome cakes and
pastry. But some poultrymen will mix
these rejected eggs with good stock
and sell them to wholesalers, and some
wholesalers will ship them to retailers
and storage companies, and then they
go to the hotels. boarding houses, res
taurants and private families, and
that's where the kick" comes in.
GAMBLING EGGS.-But let us actu-
ally follow these eggs into wholesale
house where they do an honest bust
ness. They are preparing eggs for
storage. Three or four carloads are
stacked around, and some have been
shipped clear from California. We
open a crate of California goods, and
they are certainly Observation-Disclosures,
white, beautiful eggs, superior in size
to the eastern White Leghorn and,
Minorca. What fine stock they must
have in the state of orange groves and
giant redwoods!
We now go into the Gambling room,
which is pitch dark. The operator
turns on light which is in a bog. A
hole about two-thirds the size OF an
egg goes clear through the box, and
the strong light shines through these
holes. At each opening an employee
Is passing eggs before the light. Be
fore he passes the egg it is tapped to
see If the shell is perfect All eggs
that are not clear, that are cracked or
have dirty shells. are thrown out.
The soiled and cracked eggs are sold
to the bakers, canned, frozen or made
into egg powder. The bad eggs are
sold for the manufacture of mucilage.
shoeblacking, disinfectants, dyes, etc.
Most of the cracked and soiled eggs
NUsg.