POULTRY CENSUS

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLVIII, Issue 3630, 26 April 1927, Page 4

POULTRY CENSUS

DECREASE SHOWN. The Census of New Zealand for 1926 deals exhaustively with poultry, giving a detailed account covering every bird. Since 1921, when the previous census was taken, there has been a decrease in poultry of 209,864. This, it is said, may be partially accounted for by the rise in the prices of fowl wheat. If people cannot provide food for the fowls, the fowls have to lay down their lives to provide food for the people. Fowls, ducks, geese and turkeys number in the aggregate 3,781,145. Fowls account for 3,208,384, ducks for 352,030, geese for 43,879,. and turkeys for 76,852. Turkeys are the only birds that show a numerical increase in the last five years. More than 50 per cent, of the birds are owned by people whose flocks number less than 50, and so the gathering of the figures for the census was no easy task. It was done in conjunction with the collection of the dwelling schedule, and in this way every bird, practically was recorded. Again the North Island is in the majority, though only a few hundred thousand. Dealing with fowls alone, the average flock was worked out as being 21.5 birds for New Zealand as a whole. In Otago and Canterbury the average was higher; it is lower in Taranaki and Westland.