ThePoultrySite's editor Alice Mitchell spoke to Brice Melrose about his unique collection of poultry items.

Mr Melrose collected the feed bags, waterers and poultry magazines over many years in the industry. He since donated the collection to the US Poultry and Egg Association (USPOULTRY), and it is housed in Atlanta, where Mr Melrose returns to IPPE every year to show the collection to visitors.

Mr Melrose described how pottery waterers were used on small poultry farms in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, as opposed to the nipple drinkers used on commercial poultry farms today.

Although the use of these materials may seem strange to modern producers, because of the possibility of breakage, they were cheap and readily available. Metal was in particularly short supply during the wars, and plastic did not come into wide use until later on.

A large collection of feed bags, medicines and poultry magazines were also on display, some of them showing brand names that remain familiar to this day.

Some of the poultry treatments and supplements on display at the poultry museum

A few of the old feed bags in Mr Melrose's collection

An excerpt from one of the issues of American Poultry Journal on display at the museum

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