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Show Plan Started To To Make Utah Chick Exporting Poultry Association Selects 12,000 Hens For Breeding Stock. Utah will be a great baby chick exporting state, sending several million dollars worth of live chicks and fertile hatchery eggs into neighboring states each year, when a program initiated by the Utah Poultry Producers' Cooperative Coopera-tive association is completed, it is announced by Clyde C. Edmonds, general manager. The program calls for the development de-velopment of a strain of white leghorn chicks that will be at least the equal of any produced in the United States from the standpoints of health, vigor, productivity, pro-ductivity, and size of eggs. It is believed that with chicks and hatching eggs of such superior quality. Utah will not only be called cal-led upon to satisfy her own needs but will be able to market these products . in most of the western states. At present between one and two million baby chicks are imported into Utah each year, while the total to-tal number used is between three and four million chicks. Any program, pro-gram, therefore, which increases the Beehive state's chick produe-tion produe-tion by stimulating the use of Utah hatched and bred chicks In this state, would be vastly important im-portant aside from the export angle, it was pointed out. The first and perhaps the most important step in the program has just been completed. It consists of the establishment of a number of experimental breeding farms in Utah, designed to demonstrate the feasibility and practicability of using us-ing only parent stock for breeding breed-ing that has been blood tested for disease and trap nested for quality and quantity of eggs laid. One is located at Manti, with some 6,000 birds About, 12,000 of the best hens in the state have been selected from farms all over Utah to comprise part of the breeding stock. They have been blood tested to make certain that they are free of the pullorum (bacillary white diarrhea) diar-rhea) disease and then trap nest-ted nest-ted for egg quality and quantity. Only those hens laying eggs that are near perfect in whiteness, size and shape were chosen. Every precaution has been taken to lt-minate lt-minate the hens laying small eggs, for two ounces has been set as the minimum size requirement. So rigid has been the culling of hens that it has become necessary to handle some 60,000 birds to obtain ob-tain the 11,000 or 12,000 able to meet the requirements. The hens at a breeding farm were first culled cul-led at sight of those which obviously obvi-ously could not qualify and then the others were picked up, handled handl-ed and weighed to make certain they met the size and conformation conforma-tion requirements before even being be-ing submitted to the blood tests and trap nesting. Large prices have been paid for fertile egg from which the cockerels will be hatched and carefully reared. When the quality of Utah chicks is definitely .proven, it is expected that, within a few years the reputation repu-tation of these birds will be as widespread as the reputation of this state's eggs and dressed poultry. poul-try. The result would be the development de-velopment of a great export babv chick industry here, Mr. Edmonds believes. |