August 1927 – Editorial
By Canadian Poultry
Features 100th anniversary Our History Business/PolicyThe influence exerted throughout the world by the humble hen is vast and ever increasing
Soon after the World’s Poultry Congress opened at Ottawa there were indications that good sale should be make of B.C. birds. An offer of $1000 for Hen No. 6, the U.B.C. champion, was declined; and an offer of $3000 for Hen 6 and her nine pen mates met with a similar fate. The birds from B.C. created an excellent impression, and aroused the keenest interest among the expert poultrymen from many countries represented at the Congress.
The influence exerted throughout the world by the humble hen is vast and ever increasing. The unit value of poultry is small; the aggregate value of poultry and poultry products is amazing even in British Columbia, where the poultry industry is extending at a rate which promises to overtake what used to be regarded as more stable phases of agricultural production.
Poultry keeping is almost universal and by no means confined to specialists or special plants, though their place in the whole is outstanding. Farm poultry probably still rule the roost so far as marketing values and preponderance of egg production goes. Back yard poultry keepers follow a profitable and interesting hobby.
The World’s Poultry Congress at Ottawa is indicative of progress in the poultry industry, which progress is general throughout the world.
Browning’s prayer was referred to by President E. Brown in opening the Congress at Ottawa: “Make no more giants but elevate the race.” A timely reminder that valuable as are the giants of production in the B.C. poultry world whose attainments on the road of an egg a day have been heralded around the globe, the improvement of the average flock is after all, of more importance. The fact that the average hen in B.C. produces more than 30 eggs per year above the production elsewhere is what enables such success to be achieved from poultry here. The high producing individuals are essential to attain proper selection and do a lot to elevate the race – but it is the elevation of the average hen that counts in the end.
“That there has been real progress is indisputable, chiefly as the result of practical breeders and producers who often have risked their all in a great adventure or who by quiet persistence have attained their object,” declares President Brown. Some of the abandoned theories which strew the history of poultry may yet be proved to be facts.
A feature of one exhibit at the Congress points a moral. A huge diagram showed that the human population of the world is greater than the poultry population; it is also shown that the human population is increasing at a faster rate than the chicken population – proof of the need of greater poultry production.
The Congress shows that the poultry industry interest king and commoner alike, the new world and the old world. The subjects discussed by expert embraced every phase of the industry and though primarily affecting poultry were on the utmost value to technical agriculture as a whole.
Print this page