SELLING EGGS BY WEIGHT.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXX, Issue 8550, 8 October 1907, Page 5

SELLING EGGS BY WEIGHT.

+ A POULTRY FARMER'S OPINION. "I certainly favour selling eggs by weight," remarked an Opaki farmer to a Wairarapa Age reporter. "It is by far the fairest way of disposing of your eggs. Take the following as an illustration: I take in twenty doz-n ot Minorca eggs to a firm and sell them for pightpence or tenpence or whatever price is ruling. Another farmer goes to the same firm and sells twenty dozen Wyandotte eggs for !the same price as I got, and yet there is a difference in weight in favour of my Minorca eggs of five or six pounds. Selling by the dozen is no encouragement to a man to go in for breeding birds that will supply big eggs, because it costs more to feed such birds than it does to feed birds who give smaller eggs. When poultry farming on the West Coast, I was led to understand that Masterton was the only place in New Zealand wheie eggs were sold by weight, but since I have resided here I find that eggs are sold in Masterton as they are elsewhere in the Dominion, viz., by the dozen. In Sydney a system of grading is adopted, and by this means the larger eggs fetch the highest price." The farmer in question, who is a comparatively recent arrival in this district, carried on poultry farming on the West Coast on somewhat extensive lines, his turnover being about 140 dozen eggs per week. , "Poultry farming on- the West Coast," he said, in answer to a question "is carried on extensively round about Palmers*on North and Levin. A large number of eggs are sent each year from the latter place to Wellington, where there is a good market. Most of the eggs are sent through the- Poultry Association at Leuin, and as each egg is stamped with the Association's brand, buyers in Wellington know what they are getting. The question of selling eggs by weight has been often discussed on the West Coast, but they've got no further ahead and the old system of selling by the dozen still obtains."