Atlanta semi-weekly journal. (Atlanta, Ga.) 1898-1920, 1909-05-21
THE AMERICAN EGG TRADE
BY Frederic j. Haskin

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 guarantees freshness. A number OF
small egg farmers have way of writ
ing 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 gigantic central incubators happen to
be canvassing that particular locality for
eggs.
Within fifty miles of San Francisco IS
the country's banner egg center, Peta-
luna in SOnomo county, California Sew
enty-five per cent of the people in that
country are poultry and egg raisers. those
in the towns and villages raise for their
own needs and sell the surplus stock. On
the small farms from 1900 to 1880 hens
are kept, and on the larger ones the hen
population ranges from 5000 to 1900
There are said to be a million white Leg
horn hens in that county. a speciality be-
ing made of that breed, for they are
considered the best layers and rarely care
to sit Each of these hens nets its owner
never less than 80 cents a year, all laying
10 900, 900 dozen eggs in 1907. One man in
this county makes an annual profit OF
5000 on eggs, having two helpers and
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 expenditure
of energy and time that are to great
tax on the average woman. Common
sense and business sagacity are two val
liable assets for the enterprise.
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 a sufficiently low
temperature and with proper degree OF
humidity will preserve eggs indefinitely.
Eggs from corn-fed chickens will keep
best. A man at Buzzard's Bay pickles
80 barrels of eggs a year in brine and
guarantees that they will frost when
beaten a half year later. Other expert
mentors have packed them in chaff, bran.
saw dust, dry sand, salt and charcoal
anything that will exclude air. Others
have wrapped them in unsized paper and
placed in cool cellars. Eggs have been
preserved in water glass, a silicae of pot
ash or soda that coats them; they have
or mixture of paraffin, linseed oil, tur-
pentine and fats, while some have been
immersed in a solution of glycerine and
salicilic acid. The egg shell, being por-
Gus in order that the imprisoned chicken
may have air as it matches, makes II
difficult to devise air-excluding packing,
and the frailty of the she'll makes its
handling a matter of skill.
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 con-
venient food for use in the navy-9,COC
pounds of dried eggs forming a part OF
the food supply of the Atlantic feet
when it went on international exhibition.
Tainted eggs are used in the dressing OF
leather for gloves and book-binding,
this being the one of the tenement
! trades, and they are also used in the
manufacture of shoe backing and in
making a disinfectant. The shells-those
from the giant incubators well as
| those from the packing houses-are made
into a fertilizer
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 apportioned out
| to each inhabitant. Though the major
ity 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 it's preference of white Wyan-
dottes, Rhode Island reds, barred Ply
mouth 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 acknowledgement 1909, by
| Frederic J. Haskin).
| MOBILE, Ala, May 1s.-KOssuth A. Mayer
Il aged 80 wears died very suddenly this morn.