FFA Science fair Ideas

[RJRENE]

What project did you do last time?

I measured how music affected the way chickens lay their eggs in the winter.

 

[RJRENE]

What kind of budget do you have?

Pretty small, nothing too outrageous, most of the things I need I can get from the people helping me.

 

[RJRENE]

Can you describe to us what you did last year?

I measured how music affects the way that chickens lay in the winter. I measured different kinds of music and recorded the weather and food intake as part of the experiment.

 

[centrarchid]

I measured how music affects the way that chickens lay in the winter. I measured different kinds of music and recorded the weather and food intake as part of the experiment.

Can you describe how you actually treated the hens? Did you have them in different groups where some were exposed to music while others where not? Did you have the same flock given music on some days and not on others?

I am a scientist by trade and work kids with science fair and FFA projects almost every year.

 

[RJRENE]

Can you describe how you actually treated the hens? Did you have them in different groups where some were exposed to music while others where not? Did you have the same flock given music on some days and not on others?

I am a scientist by trade and work kids with science fair and FFA projects almost every year.

The hens were treated normally, I had two different groups of hens each group with only one rooster. The first group was some older hens, and the second was younger hens (Only about 1-year-old) I also measured the effect of music in my grandmother's chicken coop, as she has a different location, weather, and elevation that I do. The results were all pretty similar. Each group had the same music (Three-four songs of each genre) Played on a loop for 12 hours (8 am-8 pm). After 12 hours, we took the Mp3 player and speaker inside to charge. We also installed some solar lights that insured that they had 12-14 hours of light per day. We did this for four weeks, each Sunday, we changed the genre of music. We also measured the number of eggs before and after we performed the experiment to act as our control. We measured the weather patterns to take into account what else might affect their laying, and we "Winter-proofed" their coops (Meaning we changed the style of water, gave them a large supply of hay, and insulated their windows) We made sure that they had the same amount of food (Equal proportions of corn and laying pellets) and tried to get them the same amount of daylight each day. (Thank you for being willing to help me, btw)

 

[centrarchid]

Could you make so the music is played for a few days in a row, then not played for a few days? You would repeat that with each group collecting eggs within each window. Assessing feed intake is very difficult when you do not have tight environmental controls. Temperature really messes things up.

 

[Quackter]

Pretty small, nothing too outrageous, most of the things I need I can get from the people helping me.

Are you wanting to continue build on the environmental-biology, or are you looking for a new area to try out?