Newly discovered breeds, such as White Leghorns, looked promising as layers.

Currently in Australia the average egg production on the top commercial poultry farms is around 280 eggs per bird. In Europe and North America the average is closer to 300 eggs per bird. I have had some of these layers, from the European breeders, in my back garden, and they laid their 300 eggs in their first year and continued to lay well even in their second year. In Australia these European breeders sell their parent and grandparent breeder stock to Australian hatcheries under a franchise. My birds were an off spring of these, the same birds that are sold to most commercial egg farms.

How these big improvements in egg laying came about initially was through Governments encouragement to the poultry industry. At the beginning of last century there was great interest in commercial poultry breeding and in the setting up of thousands of small chick hatcheries. The hatcheries sprung up everywhere because of the newly invented incubators. There were many business opportunities to supply the poultry farmer with chickens. This happened in North America, in parts of Europe, Japan and in Australia and New Zealand. The Governments of these countries encouraged the setting up of Government breeding farms and egg laying competitions.

The way of collecting eggs from one of Australia's largest egg farms in the 1940's & '50's

After this development in improving the average egg laying capacity of some breeds in Europe and America, the Japanese Government started importing breeding stock from Europe and America. As a result of this importation of mainly White Leghorn stock, by the mid-1920's, Japan was 'flooded' with thousands and thousands of commercially useless While Leghorn cockerels. Hence the urgency, in Japan in particular, to find some way of being able to distinguish the difference between pullets and cockerels as soon as they were hatched and so ovoid the waste of rearing these unwanted White leghorn cockerels. This urgency to cut the waste was the main reason why commercial chick sexing was developed and perfected in Japan.

Government's encouragement to poultry farming:

In Australia, the various State Governments were actively encouraging farmers and small landowners into poultry and egg production. The aim of the State Governments was to encourage and support the large-scale export of dressed poultry and eggs to the then very lucrative London market, during the English winter 'off season'. This export was made possible by the development of refrigerated shipping by Thomas Mort in Sydney in 1879. Export was organized through the newly established Government cool stores in the capital cities.

The State Governments of Victoria and New South Wales were particularly active in encouraging the poultry industry to develop. The First Egg Laying Competitions were in Australia. The first egg laying test were set up in NSW at Hawkesbury College in 1901, and at Dookie College in Northern Victoria in 1904, and at Burnley Gardens (Burnley an inner suburb of Melbourne) in Victoria in 1911.

Other countries such as Canada, the USA and England followed soon after this. However the laying competitions in Australia at least, produced some disappointments. Some winners with records of 200 eggs, or six or twelve bird teams with averages of up to 230 eggs often produced mediocre breeders with disappointing results in their female progeny. But despite this there was progress in raising the commercial egg production in the early stages. Breeders improved their techniques by using only breeders with outstanding pedigrees, as one writer has put it, 'something akin to those used in breeding of racehorses'. But it was realized that something more was needed.

In the 1930's and 40's the United States Department of Agriculture operated a large-scale poultry improvement scheme (the U.S. Record of Performance) where over 150,000 pullets a year were tested on hundred of co-operating breeding farms. Trap nests were use to record which birds lay each day. This mass individual performance records was used in a vast breeding program based on pedigree. But in spite of all this effort the eggs per year were still low by today standards. For example in the U.S. in 1942 it was 113 eggs per bird, by 1948 it rose to 162 eggs. In Australia the average in 1954 was only 144 eggs per bird. The big breakthrough was to come later. The breakthrough came through the development in the U.S.A. through theoretical work by mathematicians and the development of the 'population genetics' approach to poultry breeding in the U.S. Other countries, including Australia improved their laying flocks egg production, but no one would argue the U.S. was far ahead of the rest of the world in their egg laying breeding stock and later also in their broiler breeding stock. In these two areas of poultry breeding they have dominated the world.

Eggs and I… a lifetime together

When I experience the performance of my few back garden hens that were bred from the decedents of these genetically bred stock, my mind boggles to think how successful I would have been if I had had such birds on my own commercial farm in the 1950's and 60's; of course I would have needed to have had them when no other farmers had them. My own flock average on my farm would have been about 150 eggs per bird, compared with my current 'back garden' flock of 340 eggs per bird in their first year of lay: month after month they laid at a 100 percent production. Had any one else told me that their 'back garden' birds laid this well I would not have believed them. Most of my 'back garden' hens kept on laying well into their second year, but by then I was over the 'shock' of their performance and no longer kept a record of their laying.

As this essay is about eggs for the table: I should record here that I am a regular egg, eater for breakfast, from way back. As a child from about four years up till I was about ten years old I had an egg for my breakfast most mornings. Then from about 23 till I gave up poultry farming at forty I had two eggs for my breakfast ever morning. And since I gave up secondary college teaching, about nine year ago, and have again got 'back garden' chooks, I have two eggs for breakfast six days a week.

My friend of over forty years Hartley Hall, a fellow former commercial chick sexer and poultry farmer, also eats two eggs for breakfast most mornings, and has done so for most of his life. When we went to Japan several years ago to research my book 'The Specialist Chick Sexer' it was my task to cook the breakfast each morning: Mr. Hartley Hall was a very fussy man when it came to how his eggs should be cooked. It is from Hartley that I got most of the news's cuttings in Part II of 'Eggs' I have included them for your interest; you can form your own opinions about the nutrional value of eggs. I am not trying to sell you or advise you about eggs. Here I can only write about my own relationship with the egg over a lifetime.

The egg or the chicken first

Eggs can be used for producing chickens, which of course are its prime function; the old debate of whether the chicken or the egg came first is easy answered. Neither came first.

A flock of fine White Leghorns cockerels ready for the breeding pens.

When you look at a table, a home, a car or whatever remember they all started as an idea in someone's mind, so it is with a chicken or an egg. Egg producers, poultry fanciers or commercial poultry breeders get the idea of what type of bird they wants to breed and develop. The tremendous progress that has been achieved in poultry breeding and the number of eggs a hen lays in a year, all started off as an idea in someone's mind.

In Part II of the 'Egg' essay I will included some bits and pieces about eggs, whether you are regular egg eaters like Hartley Hall and me, or just a casual egg eater, I hope you will find some interest in these newspaper extracts of Part II.

Good luck…