Machines Demonstrated To Poultry Farmers

Press, Volume C, Issue 29510, 11 May 1961, Page 23

Machines Demonstrated To Poultry Farmers

The emphasis was on mechanical equipment used on the poultry farm when the poultry farmers’ refresher course was continued at Canterbury Agricultural College yesterday.

Clouds of steam enveloped a dirt-encrusted feeding trough when a steam cleaning plant belonging to the college's poultry unit was demonstrated. Mr J, L Stark, officer in charge of the college’s poultry unit, estimated that the machine would clean down a shed measuring about 26ft x 60ft in about an hour at an operating cost of 8s 2d an hour.

Keen interest was taken in the “Feedmaster” which has been designed and built by a Yaldhurst poultry farmer. Mr E. K. Broughton. Mr H. H. Watson, poultry instructor of the Department of Agriculture in Christchurch, who introduced Mr Broughton, called it a poultry farmer’s housemaid. The machine, which was built in about 170 hours of spare-time work by Mr Broughton, will deliver feed to birds in cages at two levels, brush and spray the concrete floor between tiers of cages, brush underneath the wire egg trays at both levels, and brush the top of the lower cage. It can also be used for spraying cages.

Mr Broughton said that it enabled him to feed his 2500 caged birds in eight minutes.

saving him an estimated £ 150 a year. It can also be used to mix feeds, and with an extended auger might be used to lift feed into a overhead bin for storage.

The poultry keepers also watched a demonstration of small battery-operated and petrol-driven trucks or carts. Mr K. E. Caesar, of Leeston,

demonstrated a machine in which eggs are cleaned between revolving nylon brushes as they are carried along cm a spiral of rubber, and Mr A. H. Button, of Lincoln, explained the operation of. a copper-like cleaner with water heater in which eggs in a wire basket clean themselves by rubbing against each other. They are then submitted to a blast of air. Mr J. E. Hopkins, of Bromley. gave an exhibition of plucking poultry Using the rotary auto-plucker. The farmers also visited the college's poultry unit and Mr F. C. Garland's table poultry unit at Heathcote. At the Lincoln unit Mr Stark recalled that it had been started in 1943 to produce eggs for the armed forces and had subsequently been taken over by the college with the idea of being a research centre, but there were limitations on funds for this purpose. The unit is now running about 2500 White Leghorns and a few Holland Blues. Since sire testing had been introduced, he said, mortality had been reduced to a minimum.