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Show HENS ID PULLETS QUIT THE MARKET Dealers Offer Good Prices for Fowl, but Producers Do Not Respond. Warning Don't attempt to buy hens or pullets nt the poultry market. It can 't be done! The hen and the pullet have come into their own; found their place in the sun. as it were. In the past two weks this class of poultry has entirely disappeared from the local market list, and while dealers are offering almost fabulous figures" there are no takers. "Biddy" roosts high, dry pnd safe from the axe or knife, unless, perchance a nocturnal headsman surreptitiously invades the sacred precincts of the coop. For tender and juicy cockerels of last year's hatch dealers on the local bourse yesterday offered 21 cents per pound live weight. Older birds of the same persuasion were bid in at 14 cents. The roof was the limit for hens and pullets, with never a nibble. Prices Quoted yesterday are at least one-third higher than obtained a year ago. Cockerels were plenty at 16 cents, with roosters fetching 8 cents per pound, live weight, under light demand. Hens were obtainable at about 1(3 cents. "People are holding hens and pullets for laving and breeding," one market man declared yesterday, adding that the high cost of feed is responsible for the increased price of cockerels and roosters. Supporting the latter statement attention atten-tion was called to the prices quoted in the wholesale and retail grain departments. depart-ments. The market price of wheat today is $i per hundredweight; oats bring $3.60 per hundredweight, corn $4; bran $2 and shorts $3. Last year the prices of these graius and milled goods ran: Wheat, $2.70: oats. $2; corn, $2.30; bran, $1.50, and shorts, $1.75. Dealers in poultry expect no change in the market for some time to comef at least not until broilers reach the market. |