TOPICS OF THE DAY.

Press, Volume L, Issue 14918, 17 March 1914, Page 6

TOPICS OF THE DAY.

Electrified Poultry

The predictions of the imaginative "scientific* novelist are constantly being fulfilled in actual fact. According to the "Daily Mail," Mr H. G. Weils, who had been so peculiarly happy in _.o_r,o of his forecasts, has seen another cf his idea* more or less realised. The theme of "The Fowl of the Gods," a substance which, it will bo remembered, increased sevenfold the size of the organisms which fed on it. must have seemed impossibly fantasc.c to those who read it. Yet a series of experiments made in a Dorsetshire noultryi'arm have resulted in producing something of the same effect. The "food of tlio gods" in this case is not a food in the ordinary sense of the word, but electricity. Four hundred chickens have been treated with electricity on this farm, ana the results have proved so surprisingly satisfactory that tho number is now being increased to 3900. The chickens are grown in special!-; constructed intensive houses, to which electricity is applied hv means of a combined high frequency an.; -. electricity apparatus. The currents areturned on every hour for ten minutes between 7 a.m. and *3 p.m. A large coil of heavily insulated wire i_ wound round each intensive house in a spiral form, and the application of tho current has the effect of producing an intense electric field which stimulates the chickens and enables them to get increased weieht from a given quantity of fond. In fact, they grow nearly twice as fast a.s their uneloctrified fellows. An important feature of the process is that the young birds in their first few days after hatching very rarely die, while the mortality in these first clays in the ordinary way is often very great. The birds, the "Mail" says, aro so highly charged with electricity that sparks can be taken from their beakfi. The electrified chickens are bigger and finer birds than ordinary chickens, and are described as showing a curious absence of timidity. Wo are not told whether the electricity absorbed by these prodigious birds can he used for power and lighting, but perhaps the day will come when tiie farmer reading in the evening and noticing that the light is dim ; instead of .sending cut for more keivrsene, will send out for another chicken.