PROFITS FROM POULTRY

Evening Post, Volume CXX, Issue 6, 6 July 1935, Page 28

PROFITS FROM POULTRY

The cable news recently featured the story of a woman in England- who, starting with a few pounds, recently retired with a profit of £8000, all made from poultrykeeping. It is stories like this one which entice retired business men, who should know better, to invest their life savings in a nice little chicken run. What the report did not stress was that the lady in question started just about.the beginning of the war period. No doubt she learnt her trade in a hard period, and then, when the wonderful boom in poultrykeeping followed the end of the war, excellent profits were made. Knowing her business, no doubt she retired whilst the time was opportune. There is a poultryman in the Auckland district who fifteen years ago had no capital and only a dozen hens housed in a shf!d built out of kerosene tins. Today he owns one of the best poultry plants in New Zealand, but that is not to say that others could do likewise. Every calling produces those few rare individuals who make good in no uncertain manner, and the English lady is to be congratulated on her ability and good fortune. The writer recently received a letter from one of the most successful poultry breeders in England today. His letter told a Very different tale to what might have been gathered from his well-illustrated and prolific price-lists and catalogues. For the last five years, he states, he has shown, little profit,from ;his farm of

man of no mean ability. In a sense, his letter was a feeler to see what prospects there are in our little country for a man of his ability, but it is usually conceded that with foodstuffs prices just as cheap in England as they are here, profits should be greater in England, in spite of the less suitable climatic conditions. It is in New South Wales that poultry profits have been made in the last decade, but just what might happen if their export trade in eggs was restricted is hard to judge, though it is certain that local egg prices would collapse to about half the rates ruling today.