poorest specimen in the lot, so it is always best to leave the poorest specimens to be sold by themselves. The good ones bring more without them than with them.

THE QUALITY OF EGGS.

In selling eggs, never combine some one elses with your own if you wish to gain and hold a high class trade. You cannot tell when or how often your neighbor gathers his eggs. One doubtful egg may ruin your trade with your best customer.

No egg that is fertilized, i. e., that is laid by a hen that is mated, is a strictly first-class egg. If the egg is fertilized the hen by fright or excitement may have retained it too long and its incubation may have proceeded so long within her body as to partially develop the germ. At any rate twelve hours elapse after fertilization, and this means twelve hours of incubation. After the egg is deposited in the nest-say in the morning-six or eight hours more of incubation may occur by other hens on the nest before the egg is gathered. The only first-class egg is the egg produced by the unmated hen. The unmated hen lays as many eggs as if she were mated.

Eggs are very susceptible to their surroundings. Fresh eggs are as easily tainted as fresh milk or fresh butter. Many people imagine that because an egg is encased in a shell it is impervious to its environments. Place a few fresh eggs with some bananas in a closed box over night and then notice the flavor and taste of the bananas on the eggs. If all environments of eggs were as unobjectionable as the bananas it would be different.

If eggs get soiled by hen tracks in the nest, cleanse them with a moist cloth and a piece of sapolio. Do not dip them in water. Remember an egg shell is porous.

MARKETING DRESSED POULTRY.

The first essential is to have the birds well fatted-not that greasy fat that lays in layers under the skin and in chunks upon the vital organs- but that delicate combination of fat and flesh which in beef butchers speak of as "well marbled." In fowls rather it is fiber upon fiber, tissue upon tissue of alternate flesh and fat that makes the very muscles stand apart instead of grinding upon each other.

This choice flesh is put on fowls not by feeding all the corn they can be induced to eat-that process gives the chunks and layers. Rather it is obtained best on both old and young birds by crate or confined fattening, using ground oats stirred into soured milk to the consistency of batter, feeding the birds all they will eat twice each day, withdrawing what they do not eat in a half hour and darkening the quarters until the next feeding time.

This process so softens the muscles and tendons of old birds that they will pass for youngsters. It gives a white skin and the appearance of white flesh even to birds of naturally a yellow skin. No food has been found to do this except the sour milk and ground oats.

The rapidity with which flesh can be added by this process is very remarkable. Vigorous, growing cockerels can be advanced from

31⁄2 pounds to 5 pounds in three weeks. In some of the feeding districts, particularly in Missouri, New Jersey and Canada, it is not unusual to purchase these cockerels at ten cents per pound-35 cents each-and in three weeks sell them at 15 cents per pound or 75 cents each, a gain of 40 cents at a food cost of not to exceed 10 cents. The improvement in quality of the flesh is as remarkable as is the gain in quantity.

KILLING AND PLUCKING.

The first essential is that the fowl shall have absolutely no food for thirty-six hours so that its crop, gizzard and intestines shall be empty.

First-class dressing demands that the fowl be dry-picked—not scalded. This makes the French method of killing very essential. By this method the fowl is suspended by a loop around its legs to a hook on the wall. With a quick thrust through the roof of the mouth to the brain the operator kills the bird and severs the main arteries. At that instant he begins plucking the feathers. They pull easily then-a minute later they come hard, but in that one minute the worst of his task is done. The carcass is then cooled, formed in the forming troughs, so as to pack nicely and is then ready for shipment. No incission is made in the skin of the fowl. None of the interior organs were removed. The moment the interior of a fowl is exposed to the air, decomposition sets in. Packed or handled as described the fowl will keep perfectly for days, or if in cold storage for weeks or months.

Cooks and some housekeepers object to this method of dressing fowls; but the more intelligent know that it is the only safe and sanitary way of doing the work.

The English method differs only in the killing. No knife is used; no bleeding is done. The vertebra next to the skull is severed from the head by a strong quick jerk of the operator; this causes instant death and a loosening of the feathers as in the French method. The head is drawn out from the neck an inch or two, and into this space the blood drains and forms a clot as the bird hangs by its feet. This method shuts out the air from the interior of the carcass even more effectually than does the French method.

A serious onslaught has been made on these methods of dressing poultry in several states recently, but it is hoped that they may not prevail but rather that these methods may grow in favor. They are safer for the consumer; they are simpler and better for the producer.

ARTIFICIAL INCUBATION.

Occasionally, the question is still asked: "Are incubator-hatched chicks as strong and vigorous as those hatched by the hen?" If the incubator is properly managed we can see no difference. The machine may be allowed to run too hot sometime during the period of incubation; in such cases some chicks may hatch cripples, but this is the fault of the management not of the system.

Should farmers and their wives undertake to run incubators? Why not? There is nothing to prevent them from doing so as well as villagers and professionals. If they choose non-setting varieties, they must use incubators or resort to buying or borrowing broody

hens. This latter plan has its dangers. Thousands of farmers and their wives have managed incubators successfully for years. Their number is increasing every year. To one who enters the poultry business on a large scale, the incubator is an absolute necessity.

Can farmers succeed without incubators? Certainly they can and do, if they select a variety that will hatch and rear their young as most farmers do. With a convenient and properly arranged hatching room, many hens may be hatching at once and with probably less constant care than the incubator requires. All who do this should learn to test out and reject the infertile eggs at the end of the first week thus securing more economic service from the setting hens.

What are the special requirements of good incubator work?

1. A room of rather equable temperature and yet one that receives a good volume of fresh pure air. Several lamps in a room vitiate the atmosphere and prevent good hatching.

2. A room not too dry nor yet very damp. A dry, well ventilated cellar is probably the best. Any extreme in the presence or absence of moisture is troublesome in running an incubator.

3. Patient, frequent attention to the regulating of the machine at the start, to watching the temperature and moisture all the way through and to turning and cooling the eggs. Better to run the temperature considerably too low than a trifle too high. The former makes a slow hatch; the latter often produces no hatch.

4. A steady nerve and a positive determination not to open the machine after the process of hatching begins. This may cause the loss of a few chicks but it will prevent the loss of many.

BROODERS.

Where incubators are used, brooders are essential. Better buy your first brooder and study carefully the method of managing it; after that buy only the hover and heating apparatus and make the brooder box yourself.

The trouble with most boughten brooders is that they are too small. If large enough, they are expensive and freight charges are high. The box of an ordinary upright piano, thrown on its back makes an excellent brooder. Thus located it has a floor space of 51 feet square-twice as large as any boughten brooder. Let the low part of the bevel be the back, but extend this bevel clear to the front. This will make the front nearly 4 feet high-high enough to put in a window, 2 by 33 feet, on hinges, thus serving as a door for the attendant. One of the photographic pictures in this Bulletin shows some of these brooders in operation, also others converted into colony houses later in the season.

It is a good day's work to convert a piano box into a brooder, for the floor must be made tight and the entire box must be neatly covered with tarred paper so that the full benefit of the lamp's heat may be secured. The beauty of these large brooders is that you have a well heated portion at the back, but a large space in front in which the strong chicks may scratch and exercise when they do not need the heat of the hover.

PHOTO No. 2. This shows the piano box brooders described on page 30 in operation. The apple trees were in full bloom at

time of taking this photo. Later they furnished refreshing shade to the chicks during the hot weather.