POULTRY FARMING IN FRANCE.

Waikato Times, Volume XXXVII, Issue 2967, 21 July 1891, Page 4

POULTRY FARMING IN FRANCE.

Wk'may usefully draw attention to the scale upon which the rearing of poultry is carried on in (''ranee. The sale of eggs and of chickens for the table constitutes, indeed, a very impotant branch of French agriculture, and adds largely to the wealth of the peasant proprietors. A recent return shows that there are at the present moment no less than 45,000,000 liens in the country, or considerably more than one to every man, woman and child. And the money value of the contents of the national poultry yards must by no mean? be left unnoticed in any attempt to estimate the total wealth of France. If the average price of a chicken is place I at 2Af., or2s. Id.—a by no means extravagant reckoning—it will be seen that the aggregate worth of this class of lesser livestock is upward of .£4,500,000. Onetilth of the liens are each year consumed as food, realising something approaching £1,00d,000, and in addition 2,000,000 capons are alto sold for eating — the latter being worth neatly another £200,000. The hens actually engaged in laying at any time are put down as 35,000,000, and their annual products in the shape of egus is reckoned to l:c worth over £7,250,000 stg. In other words, the t"tal value to France of her poultry, drawn both from the eggs laid and the birds slaughtered, is hardly less than £9,000,000 a year. When we remember that the number of holdings throughout the rural districts is only about 8,000,000, the full significance of these figures will be understood. On the average, the peasants of France can look to making something like a pound a head out of poultry alone. Though hardly any well-to-do French families contrive to live without consuming both an omelette and apou/rt in some shape or other during tho day, the eggs laid and the chickens slaughtered in such enormous numbers are by no means monopolised by their producers. Millions of French eggs find their way into the English market and all over Europe, the inn-keeper who desires to please his customers lets it be known that the fowls he places on his table are all ponlvis th Hnr*e. Nor does the popularity of French poultry rest on mere sentimental basis. The habits of their patron bird are better understood by our neighbours than by any other people, and they contrive to feed their cocks and hens in a manner which produces the tnaxU mum of soft white flesh and the minimum of gristle and sinew. Possibly a cliniatc neither too hot nor too cold renders the rearing less difficult, but, at any rate, the French fowl nfucifc priiwps. The English birds arc apt to be tough, tho Italian are so skinny and diminutive as to afford little more satisfaction to a hungry man than a pigeon, while the German are flavourless and uninteresting. But in France it is possible to eat a fowl with complete satisfaction.

It is often a cause of wonder to Englishmen that, though the keeping of poultry is so lucrative, it is not adopted on a larger scale in England, and that the foreigner is allowed to send hero every year many millions worth of eggs and chickens, llnw is it, they ask, that the farmer who ia looking everywhere for a new sonrc-.! of profit mi.-scs one so near at hand, and,in spite of a thou.iand warnings, continue.; to ncglc-t his pnullry yard ? Those who are indignunt at the apparent want of eutci prise on the part of the British cultivator will be glad to hear that, at any rate iu one part of the United Kingdom, some attention has been paid to the subject. Tho latest agricultural .statistics of Ireland show that the farmers' wives and daughters throughout the four provinces are talcini; in earnest to the rcaiing of poultry. In 188!) there were nearly 15,000,000 poultry of all sorts in Ireland, which show an increase of nearly -100,000 over the Jprceeding year. If, however, this return is compared with that of ISSO, it will be seen that the number of feathered live stock has grown by no less than 1,500,000. 'The increment during the period of nine years is not, unfortunately, analysed, ind it is therefore not possible to say whether turkeys, ducks, geese or chickens made the most progress. The returns of ISSS show that since that year the increase in ordinary fowls alone has been considerably over 200,000. These facts undoubtedly show that the people of Ireland arc taking seriously to the working of poultry farms, anil that they do not encounter the dilliculti'-s which arc alleged to prevent a similar development in England. The poultry yards belongs to the prtite culture rather than to the and tho cultivator's wife and daughters are more likely to give the hens and young chickens the minute carc and attention they need than arc pcr.-ons employed for weekly wages. It requires the magic of ownership to make the t"iidinp of fowls anything but a vtry irksome business—London Stan-