THE EGGS WE EAT.

Dominion, Volume 1, Issue 293, 4 September 1908, Page 3

THE EGGS WE EAT.

HOW MANY IN A YEAR? V V flow many og&s—fresh, stale, or; chickenladen—do we New Zealanders eat in a year?, It is said that there are 2,784,270 hens in New Zealand, of which 1,670,560 lay eggs; and that'there are also 282,000 ducks, of which 170,000 are layers. The others are oither too fat or too lazy to lay,' : or "lay at such long intervals that they scarcely 'affect the reckoning..' y/-' ' The laying hens and ducks lay about 80 eggs per annum on an average. So that tho ■ total, egg output of New Zealand's flocks consists of about, 133,644,800 hen eggs; and. 13,600,000 duck eggs. ' Not all 6f are eaten.' Some are set in incubators : ahd : under hens for chicken ra.ising, some' are/used, in manufactures of various kinds. • ■ As 1 to the exact number of eggs set for hatching'every year authorities differ. But possibly it : is somewhere near ten per cent. That accounts' for 13,364,480 hen eggs and 1,360,000 drick eggs. .How many of those eggs really hatch.-out goodness knows. But as regards the rest of tho eggs, which go into if the ghosts of all the-chickens and ducklings, represented in the eggs we eat in a year were suddenly, to confront us, there wotild bo oyer 13p millions of\ them—-120,280,320 chickens and." 12,240,000 - ducklings. This is a great thing for one small country to be responsible for. ■ - ■■ .: ; p Each inhabitant, therefore, gets about 130 eggs per annum, costing, say, 16s. Thus we eat 2£ eggs each per week—as boiled eggs, oggs and bacon, omelets, custards, egg"cake, etc. It seems reasonable to suppose that with slightly lower prices we would eat'twice this number. So there is room for ,somebody to start a-poultry farm—preferably, near Wellington—with about two million laying hens and ducks and doublo our: egg output. Such a person's income would be 'about £500,000 per annum.