The Egg and Eye

Colored contact lenses for chickens?

Randall Wise, 32, and his associates in a Massachusetts firm called Animal Optics, Inc., are responsible for that ophthalmological advance. Wise had learned from his father, a California poultry farmer, that chickens with cataracts suffer reduced vision and also lose their tendency to peck one another to death, a lamentable chicken habit that can result in the destruction of up to 25% of. a tightly penned flock. In fact, the elder Wise had experimented with distorting lenses to reproduce the effects of cataracts and discovered that transparent colored lenses worked just as well.

Randall Wise has in turn tried several colors, but finds that red is best, at least for the thousands of Leghorn hens he has personally fitted. Red lenses somehow not only diminish cannibalism but also reduce the quantity of food needed to produce a dozen eggs. "With contact lenses the chickens have less stress," he says. "They are calmer and easier to handle."

The 1/2-in.-diameter red lenses, now being made in test-market quantities, will cost about 20-c- a pair and last the laying life of the bird, about a year. Wise says the tranquilizing effect works not only for hens, but for turkeys, pheasants and even pigs. Not, however, for quail. Far from being calmed, they go berserk.

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