Los Angeles herald., 1909-05-13

thirty branches or QepOJS nave D6en
established there so that eggs may be
collected when fresh and shipped at
once. Compare this with the general
method of the American farmer. AS
a rule eggs on the average farm are
collected at uncertain intervals, some
from nests where hens have been sit
ting, and these are then traded at the
country store for such commodities as
the small farmer needs. The country
merchant takes his chances with the
eggs rather than lose q customer, and
then ships the lot at small price to
q large city factor. There Gambling is
generally resorted to in order that
good eggs may be placed on the mar
ket but very generally the signs on
the cases might be made to read, as in
the Bowery not long ago: Strictly
Fresh Eggs" Fresh Eggs" Eggs"
The regular egg farm in the United
States and Canada has taken many
steps already to preserve its integrity,
but has to compete with the poor farm
product in states where pure food laws
have nothing to say in the matter.
Special packing boxes are used by many
of these farms, boxes that hold, each
a dozen eggs and that are sealed and
stamped with the name of the shipper
and the date on the seal. This guaran-
tees freshness. A number of small egg
farmers have a way of writing on each
egg, as it is collected, the date it is laid
and the breed of the hen that laid it,
a useful device if buyers for the gigan-
tic central incubators happen to be can
wasting that particular locality for
eggs.
Within fifty miles of San Francisco is
the country's banner egg center, Peta-
luna, in Sonoma county, Cal. Seventy
five per cent of the people in that
county are poultry and egg raisers,
IN, fI,A tf,xtr e,,1 xriI1a
for their own needs and sell the sur
plus stock. On the small farms from
1900 to 1900 hens are kept, and on the
larger ones the hen population ranges
from 5000 to $4,000. There are said to
be n million white Leghorn hens in that
county, a speciality being made of that
breed, for they are considered the best
layers and rarely care to sit. Each of
these hens nets it's owner never less
than so cents a year, all laying 10000
coo dozen eggs in 1907. One man in this
county makes an annual profit of $4,000
on eggs, having two helpers, and the
three devoting their entire time to the
business.
Poultry and egg raising is declared to
be strictly a mans business, requiring
the exercise of the very faculties that
make a successful lawyer business
man or farmer, and requiring an eX-
penditure of energy and time that ~
too great tax on the average woman.
Common sense and business sagacity
are two valuable assets for the enter
prise.
Eggs are best preserved in cold stor-
age. This is the decision reached after
hundreds of ways were tried and count
less experiments made. An absolutely
sterile atmosphere at sufficiently low
temperature and with a proper degree
of humidity will preserve eggs in
definitely. Eggs from cornfed chickens
will keep best. A man at Buzzards
Bay pickles fifty barrels of eggs a year
in brine and guarantees that they will
frost when beaten half a year later.
Other experimenters have packed them
in chaff, bran, sawdust, dry sand, salt
and charcoal-anything that will ex-
clude air. Others have wrapped them
in unsized paper and placed in cool
cellars. Eggs have been preserved in
water glass, silicate of potash or soda
that coats them; they have been disifl-
fected and coated with vaseline, or a
mixture of paraffin, linseed oil, tur-
pentine and fats, while some have been
immersed in solution of glycerine and
salicylic acid The egg shell being
porous in order that the imprisoned
chicken may have air as it matches.
makes it difficult to devise air-exclud-
ing packing, and the fatty of the shell
II.
When eggs are sent to the packing
houses to be shipped or placed in cold
storage they are candled and the good
ones shipped or stored, the broken ones
are frozen in cans or sent to another
place to be dehydrated and form a
convenient food for use in the navy
5000 pounds of dried eggs forming a
part of the food supply of the Atlantic
fleet when it went on international
exhibition. Tainted eggs are usad IN
the dressing of leather for gloves and
book-binding, this being one of the
tenement trades, and they are also
used in the manufacture of shoe
backing and in making disinfectant.
The shells-those from the giant in
cubators as we'll as those from the
packing houses-are made into a fer
tilizer.
Not only do eggs form a considerable
article of diet, but millions are used
every year by wine CHARTERS, in calico
print works and in dye manufactures,
and others in preparing photograph
plates. And all these figure in the
seventeen dozen per year that are APP
portioned out to each inhabitant
Though the majority of eggs come
from the farms of the great Mississippi
valley, the far west, the New England
states and the North Atlantic have
model poultry farms and each with its
preference for White Wyandottes,
Rhode Island Reds, barred Plymouth
Rocks, White Leghorns, Minorcas or
plain everyday mixed breeds, is help
ing to raise the standard of eggs to a
conformity with the price and help net
the nation its many millions a year on
this one industry.
Copyright 1909, by Frederic J. Haskn)