Help sought for poultry farmers

Press, Volume CXIII, Issue 33147, 10 February 1973, Page 14

Help sought for poultry farmers

The New Zealand Poultry Board will ask the Government to help Canterbury poultry farmers who lost large flocks of laying birds on Wednesday. The known total loss now is at least 65,000 birds.

The chairman of the board, Mr L. G. Bedford (Auckland)! discussed the situation with poultry farmers at a special meeting yesterday. Mr Bed-! ford said afterwards that! some farmers had suffered! disastrously, losing more than( 50 per cent of their flocks. He had visited mans poultry farms, where he found farmers burying birds,; which were still dying as a result of the heat on Wednesday, REPRESENTATIONS The member of Parliament for St Albans (Mr R. P. B Drayton) had said he would make special representations

to the Minister of Agriculture (Mr Moyle) on Tuesday for special assistance to farmers seriously affected. Mr Bedford said that such destruction of laying birds from heat had never before been known in New Zealand “They fust keeled over like nine-pins,” he said. “The temperature inside some of the sheds went up to Il3degj F.” One of the things the board wanted to do immediately was to determine why poultry could not survive the extreme conditions. There was no guarantee that there would not be a repetition of the kind of weather Christchurch had experienced last Wednesday. TELEGRAM SENT Poultry farmers who had suffered severe losses of birds! should be granted financial aid by the Government, agreed the member of Par-! liament for Rakaia (Mi! C. C. A. McLachlan) last evening. Mr McLachlan said he had sent a telegram to the Prime Minister (Mr Kirk) asking the. Government to consider urgently the granting of fin-i ancial help “in line with! drought relief given to farmers by previous Govern-; ments. “1 represent a lot of poultry farmers, and I thought it my duty to bring this to Mr| Kirk’s attention,” Mr Mc-i Lachlan said.