What is a Fresh Egg?--An Egg Should be Sanitary as Well as Fresh
The answer one generally gets to this query is, an egg so many hours
old, and, as the average grocer prints the card, “just laid.” “Fresh”
and “new laid,” as applied to eggs, mean nothing. Hens improperly fed
lay eggs not only often unpalatable, but that are carriers of disease.
The hen’s productive organs are so constructed that bacteria which she
may take into her crop with impure food are passed into the egg.
Manure Drainage to Drink
An egg being eighty per cent. water, consider the effect on eggs
produced by the farmers’ flocks, where the water supply is mainly pools
in the barn yard, which receive the drainage from the manure piles,
and where the principal food supply is scratched out of manure heaps,
consisting of undigested grain that has already passed through another
animal.
A hen must have a large proportion of animal food to lay well, and to
produce rich, nutritious eggs.
Diseased Meat to Eat
Consider what in many instances this animal food consists of, carcasses
of glandered horses, tuberculous cows, and putrid and maggoty meat. If
a dish of putrid beef were placed on the table before people they would
shrink back in horror, yet they will eat eggs which have been produced
by hens which have been fed on these identical ingredients, apparently
entirely oblivious of the fact that the hen performs no miracle in
the production of an egg, but simply manufactures the egg from the
materials, whatever they may be, which she gathers into her system.
As the Food, so the Egg
The Chief of the Bureau of Chemistry, U. S. Department of Agriculture,
says that while such conditions undoubtedly do exist it cannot be
proven that such eggs are shipped from State to State, and that,
therefore, it does not come under the jurisdiction of the Interstate
Commerce Commission, and cannot be controlled under the National Pure
Food Law.
What is needed, then, is to know that eggs are not only fresh, but
sanitary. The Corning Egg Farm layers are fed the best quality of
grains and meals that can be procured. The animal food is supplied
by fresh, green bone, cut and prepared daily. This bone comes from
inspected cattle only, and the Farm is equipped with a large freezing
plant for the purpose of carrying the bone in a perfectly fresh
condition. The hens are housed and cared for under absolutely sanitary
conditions.
A Perfect Egg a Rarity
The growing interest in Poultry Culture is bringing the Public to a
realization of the fallacy of the old idea that “any egg not rotten
must be a good egg.” Comparatively few people have ever eaten a perfect
egg. With the growth of real egg farms through the country, the time is
approaching when the words “fresh” or “strictly fresh” will no longer
mean anything to the purchaser, and the word “sanitary” will take
their place, and in some way the egg trade will be controlled, and the
grocer, and butcher, and peddlers of eggs, will not be allowed to put
cold storage eggs out as a sanitary article of food.
Some of the New York papers are now beginning to agitate the question
of Sanitary Eggs, notably the _New York Commercial_, which is a leader
in this educational line. The day is coming when the person who is
operating an egg farm that is known to produce the egg of real quality
will have no difficulty in obtaining the price that such an article is
really worth.
Unlimited Demand for Quality Eggs
There is an unlimited demand for an egg which can be depended upon
as to quality. The difficulty that the seller meets with when going
to a hotel or restaurant is the fact that the proprietor has been
fooled many times. As they have put it, “people start well, and for
a time keep up the quantity, and the quality is all right, but when
the stringent time of year comes they fall down as to quantity, and a
little later they have evidently been tempted to keep up the quantity
by gathering eggs from other sources than their own, and then we meet
with the questionable pleasure of having a patron at our tables return
to us an egg just ready to hatch.”
When one seeks private trade for the output of his hennery it is
possible to obtain extreme prices, provided the buyers can be convinced
of the absolutely high quality of what they are purchasing.
In New York, last year, for a few weeks, a man, gotten up as a
veritable “hay-seed” farmer, sold eggs from house to house through the
streets running from 45th to 65th, in large quantities. They were all
marked in red ink with the date on which they were said to be laid.
He did not last very long, and his liberty was curtailed, and for
some time he graced one of the free institutions where iron bars
obstruct the view of the surrounding country. It developed that this
enterprising crook was buying the culls from cold storage houses, and,
in a basement on 43d Street near the North River, he had eight girls
steadily at work marking the alleged dates when these eggs were laid.
The difficulty seems to be that when you reach the question of a
“fresh egg,” everyone, almost, becomes a fakir. The grocers, many of
them, buy case after case of storage eggs, and, when the retail price
reaches sixty-five cents a dozen for so called “fresh eggs,” they are
supplying all buyers with the cold storage product, in quantities
practically unlimited. Their counters are always decorated with baskets
of these “just laid, perfectly fresh eggs.”
Therefore, it becomes necessary for the Egg Farmer to satisfy
customers, beyond peradventure, as to his ability to himself supply
the goods which he contracts to deliver, and after once doing this his
experience will be the same as that of The Corning Egg Farm, not to
be able to keep and properly look after enough hens to turn out half
the eggs he could sell at profitable prices, because the price he asks
does not discourage customers who are willing to pay well for a really
satisfactory article.
The following is the basis on which The Corning Egg Farm makes all its
contracts for table eggs.
SUNNY SLOPE FARM
(THE GREAT CORNING EGG FARM)
PRODUCES
EGGS FOR THE TABLE
“WHICH CANNOT BE SURPASSED”
WHITE,
~THEY ARE~: STERILE,
SANITARY,
FRESH,
~STERILE.~--The hens producing Eggs for the Table are housed by
themselves and their eggs do not contain the life germ, giving a
purity not otherwise obtained.
~SANITARY~,--because of the clean, fresh air housing and best
quality of pure food and water. People are learning the necessity of
investigating the source from which Eggs come more carefully than
milk or water, as it is now known that Eggs can be a greater carrier
of disease than either milk or water.
~FRESH~,--because eggs laid one day are delivered the next.
~OUR METHODS~ and feeding formulas give these eggs a delicious
flavor, peculiarly their own.
~EVERY EGG~ sold by us is produced on Sunny Slope Farm, and is
guaranteed as above stated.
ONCE BOUGHT, ALWAYS SOUGHT
SUNNY SLOPE FARM
BOUND BROOK NEW JERSEY.