1034 



A Shell Factory : for Poultry. 



[Feb., 



on an endless chain, they are passed through a furnace which 

 takes the last particles of moisture away and leaves them in a 

 completely inoffensive condition. From the furnace they are 

 conveyed to a disintegrator which grinds them into three sizes, 

 coarse, medium and fine, each being received into separate 

 sacks. This ground shell may be used for poultry instead 

 of oyster shell, which is so much more difficult to procure 

 and so much more expensive ; it has a similar lime 

 content. The demand is considerable and grows steadily, 

 so that an increase of output is indicated. The drying furnace 

 is an emergency machine, obtained in 1916, but it cannot keep 

 pace with the more modern crushing plant, consequently a new 

 drying machine is to be installed. This will be capable of 

 handling about 4 tons of limpet shells per hour, and these in 

 their turn will produce 3 tons of finished product. The present 

 crushing installation is capable of handling 10 tons a day while 

 the furnace cannot yield more than 6. 



It is interesting to learn that the whole plant, which can treat 

 the shells collected by 30 or 40 fishermen, and employs about a 

 dozen workers in the handling, is entirely self-supporting, and 

 under the rather restricted conditions that obtain at present, is 

 turning out annually over a thousand tons of crushed shell for 

 poultry. With the increase of plant, the output will be increased 

 very considerably, and there is unfortunately no likelihood of the 

 industry coming to an end because slipper limpets multiply 

 rapidly. Only as the result of years of strenuous dredging is it 

 likely that the oyster grounds will be able to maintain themselves. 



There is one other side to the industry at West Mersea which 

 calls for passing comment. Quite apart from the shell for 

 poultry, there is a very important by-product, of which a visitor 

 to the factory can hardly fail to take note. This is a fine powder, 

 from which nobody working in the neighbourhood appears to be 

 quite free. The dust is 66 per cent, pure lime and is of the 

 greatest value on sour ground. At present there is a very high 

 mound of it, a mound that increases day by day, but unfortu- 

 nately the cost of transport renders marketing impossible. 



Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the whole business is 

 that it provides an instance of a pest bringing about the creation 

 of a profitable industry, which enables those who have been 

 hard hit by a trouble to turn that trouble to account. 



