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Show Poultryman Sees Higher Prices for Eggs By Carl Frischknecht i Extension Poultrymran, U. S. A. C. Poultrymen everywhere are wondering won-dering what is going to happen to chicken and egg prices during the next five months. According to the summer poultry and egg outlook issued recently by the Bureau of Agricultural Economics, egg pricesi will likely go higher than average and prultry prices are apt to take more than the seasonal drop. The most important factor in the poultry and egg outlook for the remander of 1936 and early 1937 is the feed situation. Peed prices have advanced rather sliarply during dur-ing the past 30 days and should the drought deplete feed supplies as seriously as In 1934, high feed prices would result in a rather h:avy marketing of chickens In the p-ultry flocks of the country during dur-ing the next few months of this year. The fn.vorable relationship which existed between' feed costs and egg prices during the spring of 1936 was conductive to increased1 hatchings as well ap to a high egg production per hen. As a matter of fact, conv mercial hatcheries have already re-p.'rted re-p.'rted an increase1 of 25 percent In the number of saleable chicks hatched during the first six months of 1936 as compared with the same period in 1935. Because more chickens chick-ens have been raised! this year and the feed sypply has also been reducd by th drought, feeds are likely to be higher priced than usual. This will tend to result in more chikcens being marketed and in lower prices for poultry than would otherwise be expected. Prices Pri-ces of other meats may also be lower. If so, this also will help to hold down the price of poultry meat. On the other hand, two other things may help to check the drop in poultry meat prices. One is the probable improvement in consumer buying and the other is that storage stor-age operators may think that since so many chickens are coming to market this fall, the number ot chickens next spring is likely to be pretty small, so they may decide to . do some extra buying for storage stor-age this fall. An attitude of this kind en the part of storage operators opera-tors will help to check falling poultry prices. As a rule, poultry prices reach their highest point late in the spring and then drcp. This drop averaged about 13 per cent during the years 1921 to 11130, but premises to be greater this year than usual. In spite of the fact that more eggs may be marketed by farmers, e-;g prices will likely go up more than usual. The first reason is that consumers will probably have m'.r-' money to spend, because income in-come has been growing steadih since 1933. The second reason is the unusually small number of eggs in cold storage. We had only ten and cne fourth n.illion cases in storage on July 1 as compared with a five year average of eleven and cne-i'Gurth million cases and more than twelve million cases in three of the last six years. The smaller the number of eggs in cold storage the more chan:e for egg prices to go up during ihe fall months, |