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Short abstract:

This talk explores the climatic conditions of industrialization in animal production at the beginning of the 20th century, focusing on the artificial lighting experiments carried out at the Cornell Poultry Department to make the distribution of egg production and price more even through the year.

Long abstract:

If we are to grasp the ramifications of conditioned artificial climates, they need to be recognized as more than experimental systems designed for strictly scientific purposes in the isolation of the life science laboratory. This paper explores the climatic conditions of industrialization in animal production, focusing on the artificial lighting of hen houses. In the United States, this practice developed in the early 20th century along experiments in agricultural colleges and stations on the optimal environmental conditions of egg production. At Cornell’s Poultry Department, the domestic fowl was framed as a tropical animal by nature, which, when transposed to the north temperate zone, had developed seasonal habits to fit the light conditions that now surrounded her. For department director James E. Rice, artificial lighting provided a lever for breaking seasonal feeding and reproductive patterns, and making egg production and price more even through the year. This talk describes the Department's experiments in the use of artificial light regimes to control bodily and market rhythms, along with the agricultural extension work that touted it to be the key to 'perpetual egg production'. As this paper will discuss, this body of work highlights a conception of climate steeped in biology, tied to the limits and potential of animal life in time and space, which was operationalized to further the modernization of poultry husbandry and the management of production.