Evening Republican, Volume 19, Number 45, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 February 1915 — He Fools His Chickens Into Laying More Eggs [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

He Fools His Chickens Into Laying More Eggs

CHICAGO. —George G. Newell Is an auditor. Figures and statistics and chickens are his hobbies. Efficiency is his watchword. Back of his residence in Congress Park there is an inclosure 40 feet square in which he keeps what he

calls his “150 egg machines.” The “machines” belong to the feathered tribe known as White Leghorns. He expects and obtains eggs from these “machines” with the same regularity and accuracy as he does figures from an adding machine. He. says he has obtained ‘IB,OOO eggs from his “machines” in the last year, or an'average of an. egg every third day for each fowl, and expects to bring this average up to an egg every other day for each hen during

1915. All the hens are laying now and he sells the eggs for 50 ceuts a dozen. Mr. Newell attributes his success to the fact that his chickens live in two electric lighted coops, go to roost by electricity, and get up at the beck of 100 candlepower. “I estimated they get about sixteen hours of daylight in midsummer and only about seven hours in midwinter. I decided to strike an average. “I figured the whole problem out in black and white,” said Mr. Newell. “I found that my chickens were not laying much in winter. They’d go to roost earlier in the winter months and get up later. I figured they didn’t have sufficient daylight in which to eat the necessary amount of food and to get the required amnunt-of exercise for good laying. I installed a 100 candlepower incandescent lamp in one chicken house and two 60 candlepower tungstens and a two candlepower lamp in the other. These I connected with switches in the house. “As soon as the alarm clock goes off at six or a little after in the morning I turn on the switch and the chickens get up, thinking it is daylight The lights are turned off at eight or eight-thirty, when it 1b full daylight and the neighbors’ fowls are just arising.”