growth should be employed. Birds prepared in this way for the market are extremely tender and palatable and bring the highest prices where their merits are recognized.
Artificial Feeding.—Where chickens of greater age are prepared for the market they are subjected, during the last two or three weeks previous to sale, to a forcing process in order to produce more fat and make their flesh more palatable. To this end the chickens are fed from time to time mechanically by passing a tube into the craw and forcing the food therein. Fowls prepared in this way bring high prices in the market and the largest profits to the growers. It is a method, however, which is not used in the raising of the ordinary poultry found on the market.
Preparing Chickens for the Market.—Chickens are sold in four different conditions in the markets of this country. First, they are offered alive. A great many purchasers prefer to get their poultry in this way because they can then be certain that it has not been long killed and kept in cold storage or preserved by means of chemicals. It is a very common custom for consumers to have their own chicken coups and buy a number of birds at a time and fatten them particularly for their own use. Under the present system of law this method is highly to be commended as a certain way of knowing the age of the poultry consumed. With proper municipal and state regulations of the markets it would not be necessary for the consumer to go to this trouble since when rigid inspection and certification are established, the age of the chicken offered on the market can be easily ascertained. Until such time comes, however, on the part of the consumer, the desirability of securing chickens alive cannot be denied.
Freshly Killed Chickens.—Chickens which have been killed within twenty-four or forty-eight hours and properly kept may be regarded as freshly killed. There is a very wide-spread opinion, and probably founded on reliable experiments, that fowls are better if they are kept some time after slaughter, provided they are kept in a proper way. In the winter time it is customary, especially in Europe, to hang the fowl for a week or ten days exposed to the ordinary temperature, before consumption. This, of course, is a practice which could not be indulged in in warm weather. Fowls, however, can be hung in cold storage even in the summer time and with the same advantage which accrues by hanging them in ordinary temperature in the winter time. Just how long fowls should be kept after slaughter in this way in order to secure a maximum degree of palatability has not been scientifically determined. There is evidently a limit beyond which the keeping of slaughtered fowls should not be indulged in. If a low and even temperature could be secured it may be certain that the hanging of the fowl for a week or ten days is not too long. The temperature, however, should not be much above the freezing point.
Freshly killed chickens are offered in two forms, namely, drawn and un-
