Feeding hens at Vaul in the 1930s
Photograph of Catriona MacKinnon and Margaret Doig feeding hens at Vaul in the 1930s.
Courtesy of Mrs Nan MacClounnan
Catriona MacKinnon of Rhum View and her niece Margaret Doig are pictured feeding hens in Vaul in the 1930s. Most crofters on Tiree kept poultry, mainly hens but also some ducks. Between the wars, these numbered in total over eight thousand birds.
Up to the 1950s Tiree exported large numbers of eggs to the mainland. Eggs were bought by the local shopkeepers from their customers at a rate of 6d a dozen in payment for groceries and shipped by cargo steamer in wooden boxes of thirty dozen direct to Glasgow.
Eggs were also sent privately by post in boxes of two dozen. The eggs were protected by inserts of corrugated cardboard but even so the corner eggs often arrived broken.
Black and white photograph of Margaret Doig and her Aunt Neen in the 1930s.
Margaret Doig and her Aunt Neen (Catriona MacKinnon, Rhum View) feeding hens in Vaul the 1930s.