THE POULTRY WORLD

Hawera Star, Volume LII, 19 November 1932, Page 7

THE POULTRY WORLD

$ NEW REGISTRATION BILL INDUSTRY IN MELTING POT (By “Tight Feather.”) Over fifty years ago a well-known fanner on this coast was credited with saying, “things will never reach their ain level until we can sell a bullock at £l4 and get a man at half-a-crown a day.” The writer has never seen that day come to pass with cattle. (However, when lie recently read in one of the daily papers that eggs were selling at cightpence per dozen and wheat waS bringing seven and six per bushel fie thought that things had nearlyreached their “ain level”; but when he read in a letter that a Wairarapa grocer had bought all eggs required for pickling for sixpence per dozen he thought the climax hail been reached. Certainly it never paid to feed the liens that laid those eggs. The one bright spot on the horizon is the fact that Australian eggs at present on the London market are in demand at lid each, which means is 6d per dozen. The latter price, after paying all costs, is considerably above the market price of eggs in this Dominion and makes one think the Government has not tackled the problem of registration too soon.

It the industry is to survive, funds for organisation must be forthcoming. It is for this purpose mainly that registration is needed, but in -the writer's opinion it does not go far enough, in poultry breeding, as in other directions. there are some who live on reputation aird it was to protect a confiding public that the writer first moved as a remit to the X.Z. Poultry Association that an breeders who posed as such should be registered, not only as breeders, but a . register of each ■breed kept, from which would be sold either eggs. ..stock or chickens for stud purposes. When asked at the meeting where the remit was moved how the customer could be protected, the writer’s answer was: ‘'‘Each breed to lie registered, and two recognised judges of the breed in question to be authorised to pass tne birds as being worthy to reproduce its breed and to sign the certificate accompanying the birds, or in the case of chickens or eggs, guarantee the parent stock.” By this means a check could be kept which would prevent much dealing in unworthy specimens of th'e breed. The latter system is sure to come; perhaps the present system of registration is the thin edge of the wedge. The future of the industry is now in the melting pot. Mr J. B. Merrett’s scheme of egg export provides the way out.