Evening Republican, Volume 15, Number 225, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 September 1911 — China Power in Hen World [ARTICLE]

China Power in Hen World

People Have Ever Been Enormous Poultry Raisers and Exporters— ■ Ducks Are pickled and Dried. Hongkong.—For hundreds of years China was the greatest producing nation in the world, and probably this is true today, not only as regards the total production, but also per capita use. Of the more than 300,000,000 population of China, shown by the last census, there are few indeed who do not in the course of a year consume something in the way of poultry—chickens or ducks or geese—and certainly a large number of eggs. For considerable portions of the population poultry is the only animal food used, and for the more well-to-do classes it is an ordinary meat diet the year around. Ducks are pickled, dried, tinned and otherwise preserved and shipped to many parts of the world to Chinese who are away from a home supply. Eggs of all kinds are used fresh and are cured by burying in clay and lime until they acquire something of the quality of cheese and are a great Chinese luxury. It is easy to calculate that to meet all these lines of consumption the output of poultry and poultry products needs to be enormous. For the most part chickens and ducks are produced upon the usual basis of practically all Chinese production —the family household—■or at most a small farm. There are few families in China, even in the larger titles, that do not have at least some chickens. Near the ports open to foreign trade there are a few rather good sized poul-

try farms, as a rule. Ducks are raised in immense numbers on farms along the canals and rivets of central and south China and are much more common than chickens. One of the customary sights along the grand canal in mid-China, tor example, is that of a Chinese duck farmer in his boat watching his flock feed in and along the canal. The ducks are trained to obey him, and armed with a long bamboo pole to guide them, he controls their movements and takes them back to shelter for the night. The surplus of poultry and poultry products which China can export annually is immense. Up to- the present exportation has taken the form largely of egg products, mostly dried albumen and yolks.