DOBS POULTRY FARMING PAY.

Press, Volume LXIV, Issue 136099, 25 April 1908, Page 8

DOBS POULTRY FARMING PAY.

In to-day's issue a correspondent takes us to ta&k for saving in a recent article tbat poultry farming by itself is a poor way of making money %nd will not pay, and that "it is befcfce- as a eide- '• lino." The quotation ia only pertly correct. What we did admit was that "as a 'side-line , in ordinary farming " poaltry-keeprng—not poultry-farm- " rng—may be profitable." Our correspondent's own experience, he declares, ie exactly the revereo of this, and he asserts tihat he can get more profit from pul'ete bred for egg-producing than he "used to avor"age from sheep per bead ten yeara "ago*." We confess that the last statement is inexplicable, because ten years ago the sheep industry was weii on the up-grade. We grant that if a man suddenly came into possession of a number of weLWxred pullets, just coming on to lay, has profit from iiuem for a time might be more than he could have mad© out of sheep in the later nineties. But that is not poultry-fa-rming. To calculate the profits of that occupation the operations must be over two or three years, interest on land end buildings, and the cost of labour must allowed/, and all the losses and disappointmenie arising from breeding fowls must be taken into consideration. ' When all this is done, we contend, that it widl bo found that poultry-farnring does not pay. The frequent assertion that it does is entirely unsupported by figures. We hoar a great deal from certain people as to the profits to ibe made from, poultry farming:, but the convincing proof, a .properly dra-wn-up balancesheet, is never supplied. Yet if such a balance-sheet, showing that a living wage is to bo wonr from poultry farming, would be produced, it would do more to stimulate the poultry industry in New Zealand than anyfchang -thai cam bo imagined, certainly a great deal more than aU tho eloquence of poultry experts and fanciers. This absence of concrete facts as characteristic of all supporters of the industry. They deluge us with VBgue generalities, they wax indignant if doofcte on tie proftfcabkeiess of poultry farming—4rat the essential balance-sheet is still wanting. The same thing dristinguishes tho Government Poultry Department. Mr MoNab, wiose activities range from drafting Land Bills to inspecting the State-owned Leg-horns and Wyandotitcs, (broke out ifoo other day into loud enthusiasm about tibe Mil-boa poultry farm. Next year, we are led to bdh'eves tb« farm shouk , be self - supporting. May we hope the* we ehaE be given some figuree that wiH prove the assertion, ? For the year ending 1907, that particular farm cost tie State practically a, thousand pounds, ajnd no one can ascertain whether tins was tie fuii Amount, of tibe expondito-re, or what the receipts came to. The experiments in t!he domestication of New Zealand wild ducks, which appear to be the only experimental work conducted et the Milton farm, are of vory trifling importance compared with the benefit that woo-ld be conferred on a great many people if the Poultry Department eet itself to ■ ascertain, by actual results, wihetier poultry farming really pays. The operations that arc carried on at tie Government farms at present prove noth-rog, except that it is perfeotJy easy to conduct a poultry farm if the Sfcato makes good tihe annual deficit, end that is so self-evident as to make tie present expenditure on j tho farms perfectly unnecessary.