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. Principles and practice of poultry culture . Poultry. PREPARATION OF POULTRY PRODUCTS 317 marketed with the feathers on. In general practice with poultry, however, dry picking is done while the bird is dying, when it has lost consciousness and is insensible to pain, but when the relation between nervous and muscular systems still continues. Good work in dry pitking depends first upon the proper sticking of the bird.^ Note. When the sticking is well done, the feathers come off quite as easily as with good scalding, but with a poor stick they come harder, and an inexpert picker is likely to br
. Principles and practice of poultry culture . Poultry. PREPARATION OF POULTRY PRODUCTS 317 marketed with the feathers on. In general practice with poultry, however, dry picking is done while the bird is dying, when it has lost consciousness and is insensible to pain, but when the relation between nervous and muscular systems still continues. Good work in dry pitking depends first upon the proper sticking of the bird.^ Note. When the sticking is well done, the feathers come off quite as easily as with good scalding, but with a poor stick they come harder, and an inexpert picker is likely to break the skin and perhaps tear the birds badly. As in scald picking, the picker works as much as possible with his hands, wetting them at intervals to make the feathers stick to them, removing the feathers in handfuls, rubbing them off and unless pinfeathers are very small, taking them with the others. The pinfeathers and stubs that are not taken in this way must be re- moved one by one. For this (in both methods) the professional picker uses a short knife, either seizing the stub between his thumb and the blade, or shaving it off. Practice, and a certain aptitude for such work, are required to. Fig. 325. Gang of poultry pickers dressing geese ^ The principle upon which this process is based is best explained by refer- ence to a phenomenon which every one with a little experience in handling poul- try has had occasion to observe. If in catching a bird one grasps it by the tail, some of the feathers are likely to be pulled out, and if the hold is only on the feathers, the bird will probably escape. If the bird is caught by the thigh, unless the hand quickly closes very tightly on it, a good many feathers may be pulled out just by the action of the closing of the hand on the leg, and by the momentum of the bird. Not infrequently, when caught by the back with so insecure a hold that the person catching it feels that he has hardly more than touched the bird, it loses feathers. Consi
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Keywords: ., bookauthorrobinson, bookcentury1900, bookdecade1910, bookyear1912