Excerpt from The Poultry and Egg Situation, Vol. 163: Jan-Feb. 1953

The situation later, particularly toward the end of the year, will depend upon the volume of egg production. Output then will be influenced not only by the likely resumption of the upward trend in rate of lay per bird, but also by the number of chickens to be raised in 1953.

Farmers reported in February that they intend to raise h percent fewer chickens than in 1952 for laying flock replacement. Wever, the egg-feed price relationships in the past few months have been encouraging to egg producers, and they are likely to continue so. This may induce farmers to raise more chickens this year than they intended on February 1. Although the egg-feed price ratio in January was below average, it was 19 per cent above a year earlier. In past years a marked improvement in the ratio usually has been accompanied by an increase in the number of chickens raised.

In January and early February, egg prices were maintained by the demand from commercial breakers preparing yolk, albumen, and mixed whole egg for sale to food manufacturers and processors. The breakers' demand, stimulated by small storage holdings of frozen egg products, began uh usually early in the season.

Turkey growers' January intentions were to raise 23 percent fewer small turkeys in 1953 than in 1952, and 3 percent fewer large turkeys. In recent years, the turkey crops have been larger than were indicated by farmers' February intentions. The Department of Agriculture bought about 6 percent (by weight) of the 1952 turkey crop under its surplus removal program, confining its purchases almost entirely to large turkeys. If the decline in the production of large turkeys is no greater than indicated by the intentions, the 1953 production of large turkeys will still exceed the 1952 supply of large turkeys after allowing for those bought by usda.

About the Publisher

Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com

This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.