The Daily Alaska empire., 1948-09-18
HENS GET
 AXE; FEED
 |5 5H0RT !
Poultry FIoeks, Anchorage Selton, Killed as Sup-
 plies Dwindle

The current west coast shipping l strike has doomed to the axe the largest poultry population Alaska ias ever been able to build up unless some means can be found l of transporting feed here within she next six weeks, poultry and iced dealers informed the Anchor age News.
 Egg. producers and poultry grow ers reported limited amounts of feed on hand and the Alaska Seed comnany hasn't an ounce left" Ed Baldwin said this morning. Tn e | Matanuska Cooperative association s said to have poultry feed and dairy rat.ons enough on hand to ast only about 45 days. It is be- ing rationed to customers at pres lent
 The Arctic Poultry Farm on Fire weed Lane has already begun to kill some of it's hens after striving to cuild it's flock up to maximum egg production, Mrs. Lars Anderson said Hens must be fed to capacity if they are going to lay" she said, and we must make the best use of the little feed we have.' The first egg producers in the Anchorage area. the Andersons started their egg farm here four years ago and have succeeded in building up a flock of 1000 lay CTS.
 The last strike nearly broke us, = 1 she said, and this one is tearing down all our work again
 Share Feed
 Mrs. Anderson said that though they received Is tons of feed on the last barge to come in from Se- attle, it takes 300 pounds a day to feed the flock.
 Well have to do as we did two years ago, and that is to share as Imuch as we can with other pro- ducers who weren't lucky enough to get shipments" she said The Alaska Seed company had a carload on order which was re- l fused shipment when freight crowd ed the Seattle docks for the last Alaska bound boats, MT. Baldwin Isaid.
 The Anchorage Hatchery on the o,l I icn and broilers for the Anchorage market. received a carload of feed but we will probably be the first iones out" Albert Kulis, general manager, said this morning I He said they have about 1000 chickens and expect their feed to Hast five weeks The Hatchery im- i ports it's oggs fc- matching here and furnishes young bullets (New Hampshire Reds) to the Arctic Poultry Farm which then feeds them for layers.
 1 Since neither the hatchery nor the poultry farm will have feed enough to continue the cycle, the slaughter will begin soon," MT. Kulis said.
 The Enck Spot Poultry farm. which deals both in feed and eggs. ! has 20 tons of poultry feed on the railroad from Seward now but we have 40 tons pomised to GUS toner's Mrs Enck said, 50 I don't know just how we're going to manage"
 i The Encks have 1000 Austra White chickens of their own, and their chickens will have to go to the axe too unless some means can be found for bringing in feed ! Struggling to set up their busi- ness here, Mrs. Enck has even sat up all night with crates of young chickens in airline depots in the States, waiting for a plane to take them to Alaska. On her first ven- ture out for shipment three years ago, she and 1,200 chickens were
 pumped in Seattle by planes be- cause airlines didn't like the smell of her young charges. Not daring to leave the baby chicks for fear of missing chance to bring them the rest of the way, she spent the night in warehouse with the cheeping crates-"And they did smell" she said; but they represented a big investment for us.'
 Cost of bringing feed by air is prohihitive, it was pointed out, since that means would add SIP per hundred pounds to sack of scratch feed which retails at about S7 20 per sack when brought by ship. Boat freight is $1.50 per sack.
 It would cost 10 cents ger pound to freight the feed over the high way, Mrs. Enck calculated, which would bring a sack of the scratch to $15.50. Thus, three days of feed ! for 1000 hens would bring the cost to nearly $50 daily for the chickens.
 Not only chickens are doomed by the current feed shortage Lack o. dairy ration is serious threat tt milk production in the Matanusks valley. Though locally grown ha,