Poultry.
—We have just mentioned the Nebraska income from milk and cream sold by the farmers. It may be surprising that the sum received from the humble hen is nearly twice as much (given by state authorities as $35,000,000 from the fowls and eggs produced each year).
But the only way this can be successful is by quick and adequate markets. Dressed fowls and eggs are highly perishable products and must be put into the cold storage warehouses at the earliest possible moment. The motor car and the rural express, with their necessary accompaniment good roads, make this possible and thus increase the returns to the poultry industry as well as widen the territory over which it will pay to keep fowls for commercial purposes.
As an illustration of the efficacy of the motor truck in the poultry business this quotation from the New York Times, June 8, 1920, is given:[193]
At 6 o’clock one morning a motor truck was loaded at Lancaster, Pa., with 18,000 eggs in crates, and 1000 chicks a day old, and started for New York City, one hundred miles away, says the writer. At the same time a similar shipment was sent to the consignee by railroad. It took the truck twelve hours to reach New York. Four of the little chicks were dead and nine eggs were broken when the goods were delivered at the door of the consignee.
The train shipment was four days in reaching Jersey City. It took another day to send a notice to the consignee that the shipment had arrived. He was then compelled to send his own truck to Jersey City for the shipment. When it reached his door thousands of the eggs had been smashed and half the chicks were dead.