We Cannot Live To Ourselves

We have met poultrymen who say they are not affected by what others do. They say they have their own system and do not need to read or hear of what others are doing. Now. We believe they are sincere in thinking they are not influenced by what others have achieved but we suggest they are suffering from a colossal conceit. For we are all, every one of us, dependent on he other fellow, to some extent at least.  We are all affected by discoveries that are taking place from day to day. We none of us know it all, and we all of us are doing things and thinking things today that we did not do or think even a few years back, and all on account of the actions of others.

In the production of poultry we find methods changing in every way. These changes result from discoveries and inventions that are of such far-reaching importance that every last poultryman, consciously or unconsciously, adopts them in part or in toto.

To give one example there is practically no poultryman feeding his birds now just exactly as he did twenty years ago. Because scientists have discovered vitamins and it has become known which of these are indispensable to poultry, certain feeds which contain them have come t be used, which, before the value of such elements was appreciated, were not included in the birds’ rations.

Much the same revolution has taken place in the method of incubating eggs. Within the last twenty years we have seen the introduction and, more recently, the general adoption, of the forced air principle of hatching. Before this time the small, still-air types ere in vogue and the broody hen played an important part in producing the yearly requirements for pullets.

Take turkey raising. Who, a few years ago, would have tried to raise his turkeys to market age in strict confinement? Now, with wire-floored runs and sun porches, it is conceded to be a practical method, and one that eliminates the dangers of contaminated soil. Thousands are adopting it.

Another departure from the ordinary, greatly favored in the United States and Great Britain, is the battery system for laying birds. The pessimists cried it couldn’t be done but like the case of the lawyer talking to is client over the phone saying “They can’t put you in prison for that,” to which his client replied, “But, darn it, man, I am in prison”; so the progressive poultrymen, not accepting the pessimists prediction, persevered with batteries and are keeping birds in them, and successfully.

We in western Canada have for years been more or less, mostly more, in the hands of the large wholesalers during the spring surplus season. But this year, through an English discovery brought to Canada, poultrymen were able to di their eggs into a preservative, have them dry in half an hour and repacked in cases, either storing them for future sale or selling them direct to consumers for use during the winter. This one discovery immediately affected the wholesale egg market, consequently affecting every poultryman in the territory in which the preservative was used. Jut what effect this substance will have another year is difficult to estimate but a discover of as great importance is the preserving of hatching eggs which will produce chicks six or twelve months after they have been laid. Who will not be affected by that?

Again, the art of chick sexing wrought a revolution in the baby chick business, and even those who scoffed at it have found that some, at least, of their customers demand sexed pullet chicks and thus they became affected by the actions of others.

Before long our subscribers will be reading of a new discovery whereby the fertility of eggs can be estimated before placing them in an incubator. And we feel quite safe in saying that within the next five years there will be more starling discoveries than in the preceding ten, and that each and every one of these will affect poultrymen in their business.

We are criticized at times for publishing this or that and one good lady recently said she would resubscribe for the magazine if we printed information relating only to B.C. as she wasn’t at all interested in what happened in other parts of Canada. On the other hand, many letters are received commending us for our endeavor to present that which is new and covering as wide a field as possible, and while we welcome criticism and try to sense what is wanted from what our subscribers say, we agree with the latter and believe the path to follow is to constantly bring up every new discovery so that it may be analysed by our readers.

But in seeking the new, the untried, we try not to lose sight of what has already been proven, for we realize only too well that all that is good has its roots in Nature, and old Mother Nature is old, very old. Which calls to mind a letter we received more than a year ago from a very true and progressive friend in Alberta, taking us to task for allegedly looking back instead of forward and upholding the old instead of accepting the new.

The reference was to something we had written on natural hatching versus artificial methods. While there is no doubt that natural hatching would be quite incapable of economically taking care of our stupendous incubating requirements we emphasized that the hen just naturally did the job right and any departure from the principles she employed must necessarily be no better, and perhaps not so good, as those which Nature endowed her with. We believe that.

And so, in publishing what we do in Canada Poultryman, we believe we are keeping faith with our readers. We bring forward the new and let it stand or fall by a comparison with the old. We give the experiences of those who have succeeded by this method or that, and we have yet to find a man who has not been influenced, at every step, by what others have done. The man who thinks he is not influenced by his fellows is living in a fool’s paradise.