The Corning Egg Farm book, by Corning himself

by Edward Corning; Gardner Corning

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”

THEY ARE:

WHITE,
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.

CHAPTER IV
Preparation of Eggs for Market

If high prices are to be obtained for eggs they must not only be good, but have a look of “class,” to the would be purchaser. They must be spotlessly clean, and, as far as possible, each dozen should present a uniform appearance.

One is able to know each day the exact price of the class of eggs which he is selling, for the Egg Market is like the Stock or Bond Market, and one who is in the Egg business is dealing with a commodity which at all times is salable at a price. At The Corning Egg Farm we receive daily the reports from the Exchange, as given in the New York Commercial. These are cut out and placed in a scrap book, so that, from year to year, we are able to tell exactly what the conditions were on any given date, and form a very close idea as to what can be expected in regard to prices. And so we have an absolute basis of prices for contracts.

The nearest quotation to the egg which is produced by The Corning Egg Farm is what is termed “State Pa. and nearby Hennery, white, fancy, large.” This we take as a basis and arrange our prices from it daily, adding the advance which the Corning sanitary table egg brings.

30 DOZEN CORNING SANITARY FRESH EGGS READY TO SHIP

It is quite impossible, with the growth of the country and the demand for better things in all food products, to over-do the production of Sanitary Eggs.

The following pages show the manner in which the quotations are placed in our Scrap Book.

CHAPTER V
The Selection of the Breed—The Strain is of Utmost Importance

To a man engaging in any branch of Poultry Culture the selection of the proper breed is of grave importance, but to the man who is planning an Egg Farm it is without doubt of graver importance than where any other branch of the poultry business is to be carried on.

For many years different localities have believed that there was very decided merit in the different colored egg shells. The Culture of Boston was certain that the dark shell contained an egg with a richer flavor, while New York and vicinity would believe in nothing but the white shelled egg. It is, however, noted with interest that the Culture of Boston has discovered that the color of the shell really has nothing to do with the flavor of the egg, and to-day the rigid adherence to a premium paid for the dark shelled egg, generally throughout the New England States, is rapidly passing into history.

THE STRAIN THAT MAKES THE CORNING EGG FARM FAMOUS

As The Corning Egg Farm was located within a few miles of New York City the breeds which laid the white shelled egg were the only ones worthy of consideration, and, in the study of the question, it was found there was another important matter confronting the egg farmer, as to the breed which he should keep, whether a setter, or a non-setter. On an egg farm, where hundreds of layers are to be kept, if any of the Asiatics, or so called American Breeds, were kept, they would be a source of considerable added expense, first, in the way of loss of eggs during their numerous broody periods; second, in the necessary buildings in which to carry the “broody biddies” until they have become sensible, and are in a proper frame of mind to be returned to the Laying House. This might look on its face a small affair, but success to The Corning Egg Farm has come through watching every corner, and while sparing no needed expenditure, avoiding unnecessary and foolish outlay.

So, to the man who would really meet with a large success, all the breeds which lay the dark shelled egg, because of their setting propensity, must be eliminated.

All the members of the Mediterranean family are layers of the white shelled egg, and are what is termed “non-setting.”