Roll Up Your Sleeves, Folks!

HELLO FOLKS! — Warning! — When the politicians tell you that you may have to make sacrifices, they mean that taxes are going up.

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THE RAINFALL for July totaled 2.6 inches around here. That makes a total of 16.6 inches for the year, so far.

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THE POULTRY business has been agonizingly slow in returning to normal profit levels. For three years eggs have been selling much below profitable prices. I personally thought that two years of such prices would be all the poultrymen could take, and that before long the supply would level off with the demand, bringing with it fair returns for the producers. Now the experts are predicting better prices for eggs in the days ahead.

Poultry raisers all over the nation have gone broke. In the eastern states, where the trouble started and was caused by integration, there are third and fourth mortgages on some of the enterprizes. Feed dealers and companies who extended credit have found themselves in trouble. I understand that loan companies and banks managed to keep from getting hurt too badly.

I predicted about a year ago that the worst of it was about over and Minnesota could soon be profitable area for expansion of egg production. That prediction has been slow in fulfillment.

I understand now that the astern markets went in for the locally produced eggs, thinging that they would be fresher and therefore more acceptable to the public. In this they were disappointed. The eastern eggs, while fresh, do not have the quality that the midwestern eggs do. Many of the seaboard mixes have feeds that do not produce hih quality eggs. The feeds there are higher in price, and therefore the cost of producing eggs is higher. Now they are again beginning to look to this area for their eggs.

We can produce the best eggs in the world, due to our abundance of corn and soybeans, which make up the best ingredients for quality eggs. If we insist upon quality control in the care of the eggs I believe we can get our markets back and keep them. Competition will always be keen, but that has to be expected and is a good thing if it is not over-done.

Another thing that seems to be in the wind is a trent to smaller or shall we say, family sized flocks. We are finding out that these large flocks cannot maintain as high production per hen as the more moderate sized flocks and that the extra savings made in labor does not offset the loss in feed efficiency.

It all adds up to the belief that perhaps at long last we have learned a big lesson in eggs and that the farmer may again soon be the one to produce the bulk of the eggs. I hope so anyways.