HUSTLING THE HENS.

Woodville Examiner, Volume XXVIII, Issue 4627, 7 May 1915, Page 3 (Supplement)

HUSTLING THE HENS.

ELECTRIC LIGHT INCREASES EGG-PRO DCCTION. False daylight in fowl-houses to promote better laying among hens is by no means a new idea, and it lias been proved on several occasions that fowls kept in electrically-lighted coops, thus deceiving innocent hens, who imagine tho days are growing longer, produce far more eggs than those housed under ordinary conditions. It has remained, however, for Mr. G. C. Newell, of Chicago, brother of Mr. Richard Newell, ex^chajrm an of the Portmadoc Urban Council, a well-known Welsh agriculturist, to conduct some of the most successful experiments in this direction.

Mr. G. C. Newell, who emigrated to America twenty-five years ago, keeps lot) lions in an enclosure 40ft. scpiare at the 'back of his residence on Congress Park, Chicago, and during 1914 he obtained 18,000 eggs, or an average of an egg every third day for each fowl, and he cxpectv to bring this averago up to an egg every other day ior each fowl during 191-5. Mr. Newell attributes his success entirely to his elec-trically-lighted coops. "I found,” said Mr. Newell, ‘ that my fowls were not laying much in winter. They would go to roost earlier m the winter months and get up later. 1 decided that they did not 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 that they got about sixteen boors' of daylight in midsummer and only about seven in midwinter.”

Mr. Newell decided to strike an average of their waking hours. At a cost of about £6 he installed a 100-eandle-power electric lamp and a 2-candle-power incandescent lamp in one fowlhouse, and two 60-candle-powcr electric lamps and a 2-candle-power incandescent lamp in the other, all of _ which were connected with switches in tne house. At six in the morning the liguts are switched on and the fowls. get up thinking it is daylight. At eight or eight-thirty, when it is full daylight, the lights are turned olf, and at four o’clock the lights are turned on again, and are kept on till nine o’clock, when ad the lights are turned off but the 2-c-andlo-power lamps. These give sufficient light to cause the appearance of dusk, and the fowls begin to go to roost. Mr. Newell leaves the small lamps lit. all night, so that if any fowl wants to get up at night to oat it can do so. Eleven days after the lights were installed the daily average jumped from twenty-six eggs to eighty-three. And whereas in the moulting season under the old regime Mr. Newell only got eleven eggs a day, he now gets fiftytwo. “.By my method,” says Mr. Newell, “ I keep the chickens thinking they are getting the same amount of daylight all the year round, and I am keeping them thinking all the time.”