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Show HOME-SIZE TURKEY SOON TO BE ON THE MARKET The turkey that used to fill the oven of grandma's kitchen range and feed a family of twenty or more is a drug on the market today. to-day. The demand is for a bird that will go into an apartment house stove and feed four to six, without making the folks eat turkey hash for the next ten days. Market prices tell the story. Recently Re-cently young hens were selling for as much as 58 cents a pound at New York (dressed, wholesale), while heavy toms (over twenty pounds) were bringing as little as 35 cents. (The spread narrowed later.) That's why turkey breeders have been aiming for smaller birds that are not just under-developed runts. ' Latest entry in the tiny turkey field is the Jersey buff. It is the result of five years of cross-bred progeny selections by the New Jersey Jer-sey Agricultural Experiment Station. Sta-tion. Black Spanish and Bourbon Red turkeys were used in the initial init-ial cross. The 1946 crop produced toms averaging nineteen pounds at twenty-eight weeks; hens averaging averag-ing ten pounds at N twenty-six weeks. The birds had compact bodies, short legs, an abundance of breast meat. Breeders averaged aver-aged 65 percent lay from the beginning be-ginning of egg production to June 1; 90 percent fertility; 85 percent hatchability of fertile eggs. Rutgers researchers believe they can clip another two weeks off the growing period. Meanwhile a limited lim-ited number of eggs, poults, and breeding stock may be available in 1947, according to W. C. Thompson, Thomp-son, head of the poultry department depart-ment at Rutgers. |