EGG-CULTURE.

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Why do we import seven or eight hundred million eggs every year, and pay two millions and a half sterling for them? The answer is, that the demand for eggs is steadily increasing, while the home produce is either lessening or stationary in amount.

Why the home supply does not advance with the increase of demand, is a question that calls for a little attention to the commercial aspects of farming. So many small holdings have been absorbed by large farms, that many a cottage housewife has been withdrawn from rural life who would otherwise have reared cottage poultry; neither the allotment-holder nor the artisan has range and space enough for rearing eggs to advantage.

In a trade journal called The Grocer, in which much information concerning the provision trades is given, the following remarks occur: ‘If a due attention to details were given in this country, the stock of fowls which roam about the farmyard and gather corn from the thrashing, instead of being a mere adjunct and perquisite of the servants, would return sufficient to discharge the rental of many a small holding. Such, we have understood, has been the case where the experiment has been fairly tried; and once this becomes an established notion, our own supplies will increase in a greater ratio than they do at present. According to a competent authority, at this time—what with improved native and imported varieties—we possess the best stock of egg-layers in the world. In no country is the management of our best poultry-yards excelled. These should serve as a model for the rest; to bring up the wholesale results to their true national importance, all we require is an extension of the taste for poultry-farming amongst those who earn their living on the land.’

The real new-laid eggs of home produce are comparatively few. Their excellence is best appreciated by obtaining them at country farmhouses. The small farmers who do not take nor send their eggs to open market sell them to country shopkeepers, or barter them for other commodities. Many cottagers contrive to keep a few fowls; and where there is no pig, these fowls act as scavengers, consuming the scraps of the family, the outside cabbage-leaves, peelings of boiled potatoes, &c.; if the fowls are supplied with a little corn, they will lay a good many eggs. This desultory mode of leaving poultry to find their food as best they may is, however, quite a mistake, and can never be adequately remunerative. Fowls, to pay, must be well looked after, and systematically fed and housed.

Ireland used to supply England with a considerable number of eggs, and perhaps may continue so to do; but statistical details of the trade between the two portions of the United Kingdom are not now published. About thirty years ago, fifty million eggs were annually shipped from Dublin alone to London and Liverpool, value about a hundred and twenty thousand pounds; the supply obtained from all Ireland very much exceeded this amount. Mr Weld, in his description of Roscommon about that period, noticed some of the features of the egg-trade in the rural districts of Ireland: ‘The eggs are collected from the cottages for several miles round by runners, boys nine years old and upwards, each of whom has a regular beat which he goes over daily, bearing back the produce of his toil carefully stored in a small hand-basket. I have frequently met with these boys on their rounds; and the caution necessary for bringing their brittle ware with safety seemed to have communicated an air of business and steadiness to their manner unusual to the ordinary volatile habits of children in Ireland.’

But as we have said, a large supply from abroad has become a necessity; and the characteristics of this supply are worth knowing; because they shew that the trade can be conducted profitably without having recourse to artificial incubation or hatching—a system which has at times had many advocates in England.

The importation of French eggs into this country has increased in an almost incredible degree, owing in part to the facilities afforded by the commercial treaty between England and France. It has risen from about a hundred and fifty million to six or seven hundred million eggs annually, since the year 1860; while the value per thousand has also increased, until at length our importers pay at least two millions and a half sterling for the yearly import. The eggs are brought over chiefly in steamers, and landed at Southampton, Folkestone, Arundel, Newhaven, and Shoreham.

The egg-culture in France is almost exclusively confined to small farmers, who carry it on in a vigorous and commercial spirit, chiefly in Burgundy, Normandy, and Picardy. Every village has its weekly market, to which farmers and their wives bring their produce, in preference to selling at the farmyard to itinerant dealers. A merchant will sometimes buy twenty thousand eggs at one market; he takes them to his warehouse, where they are sorted and packed, and possibly sent off the same day to Paris or to London. According to the conditions required by the buyers, the eggs are sometimes counted, sometimes ‘sized’ by passing them through a ring, sometimes bought in bulk. In many of the north-west districts of France, poultry villages send almost their whole supply of eggs to England, from Calais, Cherbourg, and Honfleur, packed in cases containing from six hundred to twelve hundred each. Nearly all continental countries producing sufficient eggs for their own supply, the export from France is almost entirely to England. It is found that the buckwheat districts are those in which most eggs are reared—possibly a useful hint to English rearers.

The production of eggs for market is one thing, and the hatching of them another. We do not here go into the question of hatching, though much that is interesting could be written on the subject. It is enough to say that all the ingenious plans that have been set on foot for the artificial hatching and rearing of poultry have broken down through the costliness of the arrangements and management. Those who have tried any of these plans have arrived at the conclusion that both eggs and poultry can only be produced on a cheap scale by farmers or cottagers. And this opinion stands to reason. About farmyards and cottages in rural districts, hens can pick up food that would otherwise be wasted. Besides, let it be kept in mind, that hens like to roam about scratching for seeds, worms, and particles of lime to furnish material out of which the shells of their eggs are formed. If kept in confinement, exceeding care is required to supply the creatures with such requisites as their maternal instincts seem to require. What we suggest is, that cottagers, farmers, and others possessing sufficient scope for keeping poultry, should go far more largely into the business of egg-culture than they do at present. Why should they allow the great egg-supply for this country to be in the hands of others? The answer, we fear, is, that our farming classes generally look down contemptuously on the supplying of eggs for market. It is too small an affair to invite consideration. Small! Two millions and a half of money annually carried off by the French. Is that a trade to be treated with indifference?

We hear much of women’s work, and of how young ladies should employ themselves. Here is something, at all events, for farmers’ wives and daughters to set their face to without the slightest derogation of rank or character. Let them take up in real earnest the culture of fowls, if only for the sake of the eggs which on a great and remunerative scale may be produced. Those farmers’ wives who already appropriate part of their leisure to this occupation deserve all honour; and we honour them accordingly.


                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

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