Evening Republican, Volume 19, Number 208, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 September 1915 — FOOLS CHICKENS, GETS MORE EGGS [ARTICLE]

FOOLS CHICKENS, GETS MORE EGGS

INSTALLS ELECTRIC LIGHT IN THEIR COOPB. Hena Tricked Into Working Overtime —Lured from Roost at 6 A. M., Back to Their Perch at 9 P. M. A few weeks ago it was explained In a humorous feature how a Brownvllle chap had Invented a hen’s nest with a sliding bottom that fooled the hens into laying many eggs each day. Whether the trick nest proved a success or failure has not as yet been announced by the Brownvllle genius, but the experiments of George C. Newell, a Chicagoan, with his "150 egg machines,” lead all interested In hens and their product to believe that nothing Is impossible in this line of Industry. 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 lnclosure forty 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 18,000 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. All the hens are laying now and he sells the eggs for 60 cents a dozen. 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 candle power.

“I figured the whole problem out in black and white,” said Newell. “I found that my chickens were not laying much in winter. They’d go to Toost 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 amount of exercise for good laying. I estimated they got about sixteen hours of daylight in midsummer and only about seven hours in midwinter. I decided to strike an average of their waking hours. "At a cost of about S3O I installed a 100 candlepower tungsten lamp and a two candlepower incandescent lamp in one chicken house and two sixty candle-power lamp in the other. These I connected with switches in the house. "As soon as the alarm clock goes off at 6 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 8 or 8:30, when it is full daylight and the neighbors’ fowls are just arising. “When it begins to get dusk, along about 4, my daughter, Dorothy, or my wife turns on the lights and they are kept going until 9 at night, when I turn all out except the two candlepower lamps. These give just a sufficient amount of light to give the appearance of dusk, and the chickens begin going to roost. I leave the small lamps lit all night, so that if any of the chickens want to get up at night to eat the/ can do so. "Eleven days after the lights were installed the daily average jumped from twenty-six eggs to eighty-three. During the molting season under the old custom, when most of the food w'as going to feathers instead of eggs, _ I got only eleven eggs a day. Now I get fifty-two a day during the molting season. It is merely an experiment in efficiency, and I hope to Improve it "Chickens think," said Newell. “If they know they are going to get plenty of food the next day they’ll lay. By my method I keep them thinking they are getting the same amount of daylight all the year around, and I’m keeping them thinking all the time.”