THE PRIVACY OF THE HEN-ROOST

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 2, Issue 376, 10 November 1932, Page 4

THE PRIVACY OF THE HEN-ROOST

Although, as the Minister of Agriculture pointed out, the Poultry Registration Bill possibly has its serious aspects, the House could be excused for the levity which Mr. Macmillan rebuked when this weighty matter came under consideration. In this country from birth to the grave, it is almost impossible to do anything without obtaining a license, registering, or in some other way deferring to officialdom. No enterprising soul has so far calculated how far the official forms extant in New Zealand would reach when placed end to end, but it is one of the interesting calculations of the future. So far as we are aware, a man may still keep cats, guinea-pigs, white mice, pet rabbits and his dependants without first obtaining a license and sub-

mitting them to inspection, but the list of exemptions is gradually becoming more and more restricted. An Englishman's home has long since ceased to be his castie but the majority of householders could be excused for looking upon their fowl-runs as the last outpost where they could express their independence, A man may no loriger chase his wife without the direst penalties, but previously there has been | nothing to prevent him pursuing his fowls or even wringing their necks if he felt so inclined. But now a board with all ponderous official dignity is to be set up, to guard and cherish our fowls, to cultivate, as one member put it, the brighter fowl and the bigger egg, to license the cockerel : that crows at morn and condemn J the henhouse that Jack built. Inspectors will doubtless be ap- j pointed to lay down plans and specifications for roosts and fowl runs, register eggs by circumference and diameter and prod the hen even in the privacy of the nesting box. The misguided pullet which cackles without producing commensurate results may even lay itself open to official pains and penalties for wilfully misleading authority. There is no end to the portentous results which may fall upon the connubial hen roost now that officialdom is to run riot among the nesting boxes. In his delightful hook "Cheerful Yesterdays," the late'Mr. Justice Alpers included the following most prophetic . comment : —

"In this little country we have inspectors of everything; factories and fowl roosts, boardinghouses and bee hives. On a moderate computation, there are five times as many inspectors to the square mile in New Zealand as in any other country on th'e globe and ati the present rate of inerease, the public service will soon outnumber the rest of the population." When Mr. Alpers penned his cheerful reminiscences, so far as we are aware, "the worst," as Mr. H. G. R. Mason phrased it "had not yet befallen" and the Government had not made its attack upon fowl-runs. His Honour, it is true, referred to inspectors of fowl roosts but that was possibly a little judicial license which foresaw the ominous day when even the privacy of the fowl would no longer remain inviolate. If Mr. Macmillan's dire

threat is fulfilled, the shrinking fears of the wretched Oliver Twist appearing before the Board of Orphan Governors and. asking for more will pale into insignificance beside the fears of the lagging fowl when eonfronted with the admonitory forefinger of authority. Even the interesting speculation as to th'e eventual output of the hen and a half which lays an egg and a half in a day and a half will lose its mystery under scientific and official analysis. It may be that there will still be good little hens who will lay a little egg, but if they do they will probably be called upon for an official explanation as to why it was not a bigger one. There is only one 'thing which the Minister does not appear to have considered in his extraordinarily comprehens-

ive measure and that is that the hen like everything else of the feminine gender, is a creature of whimsy. We can find no provision in the bill for dealing with civil disobedience movements on the part of hens which instead of sitting and laying as is manif estly the duty of every selfrespecting hen, merely sit and go on sitting. But doubtless the resource of 'the Minister of ' Agriculture will prove equal to the occasion. Mr. Macmillan signalised his appointment to Ca]> inet by some statesmanlike obi servations upon the determination of sex in eggs and there is little doubt that the eye which can probe an egg-shell will be able to persuade our poultry that New Zealand expects each ahd every hen to do its duty.