Merry-Go-Round House For Japanese Hens (Apr, 1960)
Source: Popular Mechanics ( More articles from this issue )
Issue: Apr, 1960
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Merry-Go-Round House For Japanese Hens
Even the chickens are profiting from an automation boom in Japan! In operation at Okayama, a seven-story “apartment house” for chickens does everything but lay the eggs for the hens. An electric motor rotates the house, causing it to make a complete circuit every 38 minutes, stopping five minutes on each revolution to allow the birds to feed and drink from three food boxes on each story. The attendant remains in one spot to fill the boxes. Instead of keeping 420 separate boxes filled, he has only 21 feed boxes to look after for the entire 420 chickens in the house. The machine is so geared that three cages on each floor stop for five minutes every 38 minutes, feeding 21 hens each turn. In appreciation for such deluxe service, the chickens readily lay eggs which roll forward on a small ramp to be collected.
I think that this is actually a rather good idea, however, I can hear PETA complaining if we tried something like this today. They’d say something about the chickens needing “a source of food readily available to them at all times.”
Comment by Zak Lybrand — February 22, 2009 @ 8:26 pm