ITEMS OF INTEREST.

Southern Cross, Volume 13, Issue 52, 24 March 1906, Page 2

ITEMS OF INTEREST.

BLIND POULTRY FARMER. EX-ARMY CAPTAIN’S WONDERFUL SENSE OF TOUCH. The latest occupation for the 'blind is poultry farming. In 1899, Captain Peirson Webber, serving on the ‘Afghan frontier, was stricken ■ with sunstroke, and lost the use of his eyes. When he came home ho shuddered at the idea of continued inertness, and after learning the usual accomplishments of the blind, he studied poultry farming, and finally took a farm at Stockton, in Warwickshire. That was three years ago. Since then he has raised 2000 chickens and ducks and conducted a profitable business. ‘■‘Yes,” said Captain Webber, in conversation with a representative of the “Daily Mail,” “it’s quite easy to find one’s way about the buildings. I started with one incubator. In the first year I reared 700 chickens. “My blindness does not prevent me from judging poultry. I g'et hold of them, and from the feel of the feathers, the shape of the head and beak, the size and shape of the 'spurs, and the general conformation of the body, I can tell within a little the breed of the bird, its condition, its age. and other particudarities.”