For the poultry fancier, poultry industry historian and potential chick sexers. Extracts from: 'The Specialist Chick Sexer' R.D. Martin, available at US$19.95 airmailed to any part of the world within 7 to 10 days. CARTER BROTHERS
Carter Brothers of Werribee were the largest egg farmers in Australia from the 1930s till the 1950s. They specialized in egg production for the table, for both the Australian market and export to the United Kingdom. They had an all White Leghorn flock and hatched all their own replacement chickens each spring. With a laying flock of 250,000 birds, the saving financially in being able to separate the pullets and cockerels at day old were considerable. Before they employed a Japanese chick sexer in 1935 all the cockerels had to be reared until they were about six to eight weeks old: then sold at the various Melbourne poultry auctions for well below the cost of the feed they ate. There was also the extra brooder space they took up and the considerable labour required with all the extra handling and transport. This extract gives you some idea of the poultry industry in the 1930s and 40s.The extracts also compares the accuracy of the Japanese chick sexers and the early Australian chick sexing students. And the later attempts to stop Japanese chick sexers coming to Australia. An exception to this "tied house" system was Carter Brothers, who hatched chickens in such large numbers that they could offer full-time work to one chick sexer. From 1935 till 1940 Carter Brothers engaged Mr Kataoka to sex their chickens, and to hold classes on their farm. For many years Carter Brothers had the largest egg-producing farm in the world. Most of their eggs were exported to England. In 1934 they were not able to engage a Japanese sexer as the incubator manufacturers had all the available Japanese chick sexers under contract. It did not take Mr Kataoka long to work out that he would he better
working under contract for Carter Brothers, which he did from 1935
until the war.
In the 1930s and 1940s practically all the big poultry farms in Australia carried several breeds of poultry, and many of them some ducks. Although they sold eggs for the table they also derived income from selling eggs for hatching, day-old chicks, started pullets, breeding hens, stud cockerels and table birds. Carter Brothers differed from almost all other poultry farms in
Australia: the layout of their farm and their whole operations had
one object, the mass production of eggs for table use. The original farm, Ribblesdale, had been founded by their parents on a five-acre (two-hectare) dry-area block bought in 1910 from the Closer Settlement Board as a workers' home. They bought their first incubator, a "Petaluma" of 100-egg capacity, in 1911 and later several others were bought. In 1919 they installed an Austral Mammoth incubator of 6000-egg capacity, heated by coke. Uter they built two similar machines, each of 10 000-egg capacity. By this time they had increased the flock to approximately 12 000 birds and the original block was fully stocked. Then, they set out to build the largest poultry farm in the world. They bought more land from the State Rivers and Water Supply Department. In 1924 they bought from America a "Buckeye" I-lot Water
Incubator of 10 300-egg capacity, heated by kerosene and up until
about 1944 it was still in use on occasions. Their capacity in the mid-1930s was for 92 300 eggs. Up until about the mid 1940s the largest number of chickens hatched in a season were approximately 404 000. From 1935 all chickens were sexed. Some cockerels were kept for breeding purposes. A few of the early-hatched cockerels were sold to dealers for table purposes, but most were destroyed after they were sexed. All pullets were kept for their own laying replacement stock. They never sold any day-old chickens or breeding stock. In most years they exported to Britain 15 000-20 000 cases of eggs. The rest they sold in Australia. (There are thirty dozen eggs in a case.) They had a fleet of trucks to cart foodstuffs, materials and eggs. In the 1940s they again increased their incubator capacity to 190 700 eggs. This enabled them to hatch from 750,000-1,000,000 chickens in a hatching season of 13-14 weeks, starting at the end of June and finishing in September. Carter Brothers, with their large flock of birds and large incubator capacity, were well equipped to supply as many as 10 000 partially incubated eggs a day to scientists for vaccines. It is possible that no other farm in the world could have, at that time, supplied so many. As late as the 1936 hatching season Carter Brothers still believed that there might be some merit in an English firm's product which, it was claimed, could sex eggs. As a letter from Mr. Kataoka to Carter Brothers shows, the Japanese chick sexer did not think much of this egg sexer. Mr. Kataoka had a very polite way of saying this, as his letter, reproduced here, shows.
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