The Control of Cannibalism in Battery Brooders and Fattening Batteries

For the past three years cannibalism has been controlled and prevented by the use of natural colored ruby lights in battery brooders and fattening batteries at the Washington Agricultural Experiment Station. During the winter of 1929 in the experiments being conducted in the nutritional laboratory, considerable difficulties were encountered by the development of cannibalistic habits with the White Leghorn chicks closely confined in batteries. The trouble appeared when the chicks reached five or six weeks of age and were developing new feathers at a rapid rate. Close confinement and the presence of blood-filled shafts of new feathers in a well lighted battery room were apparently major contributing causes of these outbreaks of cannibalism. The cannibalism was so severe that many of the chicks were killed before any method of prevention could be devised. In attempting to control these outbreaks, various shades of colored light bulbs were tried to observe the . . .