HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Huron Expositor, 1988-04-06, Page 3EASTER CHICK - Scott Poultry Farms of Seaforth saw this guy bust out of his shell
over the Easter weekend along with about 30,000 of his buddies as they put the hat-
chery to work on Good Friday. Corbett photo.
THE HURON EXPOSITOR, APRIL 6, 1988 — 3
Easter sees thousands of chicks at local hatchery
Easter may be the only time a lot of the
pepple in the area have their minds on bun-
niess'7ar d'chicks -most of them chocolate, but
Scott Poultry Farms of Seaforth was hopp-
ing with chicks this Easter as the hatchery
brought about 25 - 30,000 chicks into the
world.
The chicks had to go through a long pro-
cess from the time they came out of the egg
to the time they left the hatchery. They are
grouped according to sex, and chicken sex-
ers are brought in to do this job. Once their
gender is determined the chicks have to be
vaccinated, and they are run through a
machine which inserts a needle into the
back of their necks and gives them each a
dose of vaccination. Their spurs are then
snipped off with fingernail clippers before
they can grow into anything dangerous, and
they are ready for their new lives out of the
egg as laying hens.
Bill Scott says his hatchery goes through a
lot of chicks in a year -somewhere in the one
and two million range. The hatchery does
custom hatching for a number of other hat-
cheries and they work year-round. The hat -
citing they did on the Easter weekend was
for Denfield, but twice each year Scotts will
do a hatching for its own flock of 16,600 lay-
ing hens. They also keep 7,000 hens as a
breeder flock to provide them with eggs.
Their incubators can hold 100,000 eggs at a
time, and the eggs spend about 18 days in
the incubator. It takes the eggs 21 days to
hatch so about 17 hatches can be done in a
year. The incubator not only keeps the eggs
warm, but it also ensures the chicken em-
bryo develops properly and doesn't rest in
one place too long. To achieve this it rolls
the eggs periodically to similate the way a
mother hen will kick her eggs around.
The chicks the hatchery was dealing with
were White Leghorn Babcocks which are a
strain of laying hens. Only about two to four
per cent of the chicks will die and the rest
will be laying eggs in about 20 weeks.
A hen will lay an average of 22 to 23 dozen
eggs per year. It IS estimated it takes one
laying hen for every person in Canada to
keep the country supplied with eggs, and
there are currently 19 million hens in
Canada in the regulated flocks.
The story of laying hens doesn't have a
very happy ending, as after a year the flocks
are renewed and the old hens end up in
Campbell's soup kitchen.
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EASTER HATCHING - Bill Scott of Scott Poultry pulls one bin from a stack containing
chicks hatched over the Easter holiday, The hatchery sees between one and two
million chicks out of their shells each year.
1
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A QUICK LOOK - Chicken sexers worked fast to divide the newly hatched chicks at
Scott Poultry according to sexual gender. Corbett photo.
BINS OF CHICKS were everywhere at
Scott Poulty farm as the hatchery there
went to work over the Easter holiday. Cor-
bett photo.
o fund
ridge
uction
1
Jack Riddell, M.P.P. for Huron, has an-
nounced a $568,800 grant to Huron County
for construction of Ball's Bridge over the
Maitland River near the Colborne/Hullett
township boundary.
Mr. Riddell made the announcement on
behalf of Honorable Ed Fulton, Minister of
Transportation.
The $568,800 grant represents the total
supplementary subsidy requested by the
County for the $711,000 bridge in 1988, and is
in addition to the road grants normally
given to Huron County by the Ontario
government.
When completed, the project will provide
a much needed additional crossing of the
Maitland River between Highway 8 and
County Road 25, and a more direct route to
the grain elevators in Londesborough.
"The Government of Ontario is commit-
ted to roads and highways as generators of
economic growth and as links for families
and emergency services," Mr. Riddell said.
"This additional funding reinforces that
commitment."
_' >-,
HENRY MERO sitting in the Model A the
day he got ft on the road. Mr. Mero says he
will drive It for about a year and then sell it
and move on to the next vehicle. He says
he has owned over 300 cars In his lifetime,
and has made a i+.riby out of restoring
them for the past 19 v -ars Corbett photo,
MODEL A - So you'll know what this vehicle is If you see It coming at you, it is a Model A
put together by Henry Mero of Seaforth. Mr. Mero had the vehicle on the street for the
first time on Thursday after having worked on it for two years. Corbett photo.
Model A is local
There is a lot of talk about heritage
character in Seaforth, but it is always con-
cerning buildings from earlier times. Last
week, however, there was some heritage
character of another kind on Seaforth's
Main Street - Henry Mero of Seaforth was
cruising the streets in a Model A truck.
Thursday was the Model A's first day out
of the shop and on the street in a long time.
Mr. Mero has bad the vehicle in the works
for two years. He has had it completely
taken apart, and had the frame sand blasted
and re-rivetted. Mr. Mero says everything
on the car is original and the car has been
restored down to fine details, including the
wooden trim along the roof's interior.
This is far from the first vehicle Mr. Mero
has restored. He got seriously interested in
this work about 15 years ago, and in the little
shop behind his house has redone about 30
cars and trucks including about a dozen
Thunderbirds, an assortment of Cameros, a
couple trucks and one 1959 Corvette.
He does this for a hobby, and says in each
case he'll just drive the vehicle for a while
and then sell it.
Mr. Mero was a car fanatic from the time
he was a kid.
When asked if he learned how to fix cars
up through shop classes in school Mr. Mero
said he "used to play hookey from school to
go driving. I had 20 cars by the time I got my
license."
And while most people keep the same car
for as long as possible, Mr. Mero estimates
he has owned over 300 cars since his school
days.
Mr. Mero says his isn't a very expensive
hobby, because selling the cars pays the ex-
penses of fixing them in the first place.
"It is expensive at the start, but not to
keep up, because you are always selling one
ear to nay for the next one."
Obviously the vehicles aren't cheap when
they are sold. For example Mr. Mero is ask-
ing about $20,000,"as a round figure," for
the Model A he just put on the road. But he
has received more before, and one Thunder-
bird he rebuilt six years ago sold for $35,000.
Mr. Mero used to go to enter his cars in
car shows but says that is something he has
SiliE�R C>' t
car hobbyist's_latest project
ALA t bill L 1 1 IL Irl
ANTIQUE AUTOMOBILE - This Model A was put together by Henry Mero of Seaforth
over the course of two years, and he says it contains all original parts. It is about the
thirtieth vehicle Mr. Mero has brought back to life since he began doing so as a hobby
15 years ago. Corbett photo.
gotten away from recently. He did have
some successes at it, however, and at one
wu1petttwn al. a North American Mustang
meet in Dearborne, Michigan he got third
prize for a 1967 Mustang he had.
Some of the cars he has redone have been
successful for other people as well, and the
last Model A he rebuilt has got a few firsts in
local competitions.
Mr. Mero will likely be driving his Model
A for a year or so, and when the snow flies
and he isn't so busy with business he will be
busy in the shop on his next project.
Main Street workshop gives
building owners information
Seaforth's Main Street building owners
were treated to an informing evening
recently, as a renovations workshop was
sponsored by Seaforth's Main Street pro-
gram and three guest speakers were
presented.
The "Fix Up Your Building Workshop"
was attended by Peter Hyndman, architec-
tural advisor for Mainstreet Canada and
recently appointed Deputy Director for
Mainstreet Canada. Gail Sessman, from On-
tario's Ministry of Culture and Communica-
tions, gave the audience a fresh perspective
on building restoration. Ms. Sessman is also
the province's heritage grant expert. A
more local personality, Frank Strickland of
Clinton, told the audience how he has finan-
cially benefitted from restoring and
renovating a building he owns on the Square
in Goderich.
Tom Lemon, Seaforth's Mainstreet coor-
dinator, tuned the audience in to the pro-
blems in Seaforth's business sector by show-
ing them the results of two surveys which
were done last year.
The first survey was done last Spring and
the marketing class from Seaforth District
High School helped. The polling was done
anonymously on 129 randomly selected
Seaforth shoppers. The poll asked questions
like what times people shop and what goods
and services thebuy in Seaforth, and in-
cluded 46 questions. It apparently "came
across very clearly that we had to make ma-
jor improvements" said Mr. Lemon.
A second study was done to compare
Seaforth business directly to its competitors
to see how it stacks up. Seaforth business
was compared to East Stratford, malls in
London, and neighboring towns Seaforth is
losing business to. Prices was one area
where this town did hold its own, as was
parking space. But in terms of store win-
dows, management, services offered, and
general image Seaforth was below par.
MASSIVE POTENTIAL
The underlying message in what each of
the speakers said was the appearance of a
store -or a town- has a direct effect on
whether or not shoppers will stop there. To
improve Seaforth's appearance and bolster
the town's image renovations to many of the
Main Street businesses are necessary.
Every speaker said Seaforth has massive
potential in its heritage district, and should
capitalize on that by restoring buildings us-
ing Heritage Canada grants.
"As you first drive into Seaforth you can't
help but marvel at the fantastic building
stock you've got here," said Ms. Sussman,
adding "there are so many buildings of
great significance to the region as well as
the town,"
Ms. Sussman went- on to say a lot of the
heritage character of these buildings has
been lost or covered up, but building owners
should be finding ways to exploit them.
She also spoke about building renovations
with three main topics in mind: conserva-
tion of heritage character, authenticity -or
what she call being true to the building, and
ongoing building maintenance.
Mr. Hyndman tried to give the audience a
sense of what it means to design a
storefront, and to emphasize the attitude he
thinks is needed to bring about changes.
"Is the time you spend on your business
equivalent to the time you spend on your
home?" asks Mr. Hyndman. "You spend
hours on weekends fixing up your home, but
how much do you spend on your business?
You should value your store the same way
and take the same pride in it as you do in
your home."
Mr. Hyndman brought slides with him pic-
turing businesses from some of the other
towns in Canada which have enjoyed suc-
cess with their Mainstreet programs.
Nelson, British Columbia was one such
place, and where at one time it was a small
run down community it is now booming, so
much so the popular movie "Roxanne" was
recently filmed there.
Mr. Strickland told of his experience with
building restoration, as his building on the
Square in Goderich has been doing very
well. He did considerable renovations to the
outside of the building, and inside turned the
upstairs into eight single apartments. Three
businesses are located at street level.
Aside from improving the looks of the
building, these changes have made for other
successes for Mr. Strickland. The building
won an Ontario Renews Awar. Mr.
Strickland also says his apartments are
always full, and when a room is empty he
doesn't need to advertise to find a tenant to
fill it. .
"Everyone won. It was beneficial to
ourselves, other stores on the Street, and the
town," says Mr. Strickland of the changes to
his building.
"I can't see why anybody wouldn't do it. If
I get another building I'll want it to be a
credit to myself and the community."
Mr. Strickland spoke to many who attend-
ed the workshop about how a building can
work financially for its owner.
The turnout of about 30 people for the
workshop was a good one in the eyes of Mr.
Hyndman, who does workshops like this on a
regular basis. But Mr. Lemon would have
liked to have seen a few more building
owners show interest.
Mr. Lemon says he was very pleased with
the interest of the people who attended, but
he had sent out 130 invitations for the
Turn to page 24
COMMUNITY CALENDAR
If you're organizing a non-profit event of interest to other Seaforth area residents, phone the
recreation office at 527-0882 or the Expositor al 527.0240 or mail the information to Communi-
ty Calendar, The Huron Expositor, Box 69. Seaforth, Ontario, NOK 1WO well in advance of the
scheduled date Space for the Commun,rj Calendar is donated by The Huron Expositor
Wed., April 6
9 - 10 a.m. Yoga at Arena
1:30 - 4 p.m. Senior Shuffleboard
6 p.m. Ringette Annual Meeting and
Potluck et Arena
meet at the home of Mrs. Mary Nolan
8 p.m. Hospital Auxiliary Meeting in the
Hospital Board Room. Bring a smal'
bulb or plant slip, etc. for Acti, ct
Group.
Thurs., April 7 fed., April 13
1 p.m. Seaforth Happy Citizens meet at 1:30. 4 p.m. Senior Shuffleboard
Legion. Dessert, Euchre. Bring dishes & 7 - 9 p.m. Summer Program Registration at
cutlery. Arena
Sat., April 9
1:30 - 2:30 p.m. Story Hour at the Library
2 p.m. First Presbyterian Church Rummage
and Bake Sale
Tues., April 12
2 p.m. Seaforth Women's Institute will
8 p.m. Seaforth Horticultural Society Meeting
at Seaforth Public School. Speaker is
showing slides of wildflowers on the
Bruce Trail. Everyone welcome,
Thurs., ril 14
7 - 9 p.m. Summer Program Registration