The Corning Egg Farm book, by Corning himself

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.