Evening star., 1939-07-23

IL
a show like that. but the poultry industry is
billion-dollar one today, with more than six
million American families making all or part
of their livings out of it. When young Jimmy
Rice started puttering around with hens
little more than half a century ago. bankers
had only the frosty eye for anyone who was
foolhardy enough to think the chicken busi-
ness had any money in it; and the head of
the agricultural department at Cornell warned
him sternly that, Everybody ever knew
who got the chicken fever came out of it look
ing like molting hen sitting on one egg
That was shortly after Jimmy entered
Cornell in 1886. Neither Cornell nor any
other college had poultry department, or
offered any poultry instruction. Nobody
knew anything about poultry as an agricul-
tural science, the professor told Jimmy. Men
had learned to breed cows for greater milk
production and greater butter fat content in
the milk They had made science of breed
ing cattle, hogs and sheep. But poultry-keep-
ing was right where it had been for hundreds
of years.
Young Jimmy refused to be squelched.
wen, ne SdlO, suppose SIdIt iHiuHIS Out
something about it..
The professor could not be impressed, and
firmly refused to install any chickens for
Jimmy's proposed researches But he finally
agreed to let Jimmy install four small focks
in the corner of barn at his own expense.
They were the first experimental focks of
chickens in any American college.
Jimmy started by testing the effects of
various feeds. Agricultural scientists had
worked out learned formulas for the feeding
of other critters, but had never bothered
about hens. Jimmy's student researches laid
the foundation for scientific feeding, which
is the very nub of the poultry industry today.
Even the taste of the egg, the color of the
yok, and Matching quality are controlled by
feeding Chickens, like babies. get cod-liver
oil and other vitamin potons. Broilefs, as
we'll as eggs, are turned out by mass produc-
ton because of this Development poultrymen
keep thousands of birds in an indoor space
where an time farmer would have thought
q small flock crowded. because they can make
up to a large extent for the lack of sunshine
and outdoor air in their feeding rations.
Jimmy heard about man who had flock
of 700 Leghorns - the biggest flock he knew
about, anywhere. He went to see them. and
found that instead of Matching the chicks by
setting hens on the eggs the man had built an
artificial incubator. 1t looked like something
that Rube Goldberg might think up; the
farmers wife had to pour hot water into the
top of it at regular intervals with teakettle
But it worked, and Jimmy went back to
Cornell and worked out an improved model
And, thanks in part to the artificial incubator.
that big flock" of 700 Leghorns would be
lost in modern flock. One big producer can
set two and half million to three million eggs
at once in fifty mammoth incubators. 1mag-
inc trying to hatch that many chickens by
the setting-hen method, at about dozen
eggs per hen!
But Matching is only half the job Chickens
have to be kept warm after they are hatched
and at the time Rice started out, nobody had
figured out way to take that job away from
the old mother hen. So focks still had to be
kept small; twenty-five to fifty was the limit.
But few years after Rice had finished college,
and was running chicken farm with part
ner, he heard about an artificial brooder that
man in Nebraska had devised, So Jimmy
and his partner built one - gasoline burn
ing substitute for hen. 1t worked and he
boosted his hocks to 200 each. Many modern
brooding systems accommodate oOO or more.
(Contjnvsd on poss 75)