Poultry Rationing A very aggrieved poultry farmer reports a farcical
state of affairs under the new poultry-food rationing scheme. After obey- ing the original Government suggestion that poultry-keepers should kill off most of their older laying birds, only to find the acutest shortage of eggs ever known as the result, she found her- self with something over two hundred birds. For these she received twenty coupons. She was therefore a little astonished, when comparing notes with other poultry-keepers in the local market, to find not only that this ratio was nowhere consistent at all, but that one farmer, with twenty birds, had one thousand coupons. Country markets are excitable places, and it is just possible that a •sense of grievance has inflated these figures a little. But, even allowing for that, this remains a strange mani- festation of the official mind. But the postscript is stranger. To the protest of the poultry-keeper that poultry-keeping was be- coming an impossible, if not farcical, thing, the officials had a most comforting answer: " We suggest," they said, " that you keep cows instead."
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