James Garfield Halpin*

J. G. HALPIN

mittees and special assignments. Termohlen is President of the World's Poultry Science Association for 1949-51. He served with the U. S. Army in World War I and is a member of the American Legion, Sigma Alpha Epsilon, Phi Kappa Phi, Gamma Sigma Delta and Alpha Zeta. He married Marie Saloman in 1923 and has two daughters. THE HALPIN BREAKFAST

who graduated from Wisconsin in 1922 and later obtained his Ph.D. degree, specializing in genetics and poultry husbandry; and E. Naber, who graduated in 1950. Homer Huntington of the Poultry and Egg National Board presented Jimmie with a distinctive "poultry" tie and made him an Honourary Member of the Good Egg Club. W. M. Insko, Jr., University of Kentucky, President of the Poultry Science Association spoke on behalf of that organization. C. A. Elvehjem, Dean of the Graduate School and Chairman of the Department of Biochemistry at Wisconsin, paid tribute to Jimmie's research, stating that he typified the "youthful, yet mature, spirit of research." Noble Clark, Director of the Agricultural Experiment Station termed him "a triple threat man—teacher, extension worker and researcher." Professor Halpin was presented by his staff and graduate students with a painting of the Poultry Building. The artist was B. C. Jorns of the Department of Agricultural Journalism at the University. In a few words, Jimmie responded, claiming, in his modest fashion, that the credit was due to his staff and students. If one may paraphrase his closing remark, "the great American hen—may she go on in her glory and may her son never set," this breakfast was a fitting, well-deserved tribute to a great American poultryman— may he go on in his glory and his sun will never set—it will always shine at high noon and its light will be reflected in the inspiration given to a great host of students.

James Garfield Halpin* Heredity and environment play such an important part in the lives of men and * This appreciation of the life and work of James Garfield Halpin, alias Jimmie, was written by E. B.

Downloaded from http://ps.oxfordjournals.org/ at colostateuniv on June 28, 2015

On Wednesday morning, August 23, members of the Association and guests met at the Wisconsin Union at a breakfast in honour of Professor Halpin—better and affectionately known as "Jimmie"—to give recognition to his many years of service to the poultry industry. Professor E. W. Callenbach of the Pennsylvania State College, a graduate of Wisconsin and a former student of Professor Halpin, presided. Short addresses, paying tribute to Jimmie, were given by some ten individuals representing all phases of poultry husbandry and of the activities of the honoured guest. Among these were: Howard C. Pierce of the Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company, a fellow charter member of the Poultry Science Association and also a pioneer in poultry departments at agricultural colleges; H. L. Russell, formerly Dean of the College of Agriculture, University of Wisconsin, who hired Jimmie, bringing him from Michigan (Dean Russell paid tribute from "a has been to an iser"); and E. B. Hart, Professor Emeritus, formerly Chairman of the Department of Agricultural and Biological Chemistry, with whom Jimmie collaborated in many nutritional investigations. Three "generations" of students were represented by H. L. Kempster, University of Missouri, who was a student under Jimmie at Michigan State College; L. W. Taylor of the University of California,

929

930

J. G. HALPIN

Heaton and is reproduced by kind permission from the August, 1950 edition of Processing Equipment News, published by the Barker Poultry Equipment Company, Ottumwa, Iowa.

Halpin was born in 1883, there are famous mineral springs. The mineral waters at Watkin's Glen are five times as potent as those of that famous German Spa—at Bad Nauheim. As a boy, Jimmie Halpin must have absorbed a great deal of that mineral water. At the very first opportunity he had to start poultry nutrition research, it was with m>ijnerals. Poultry husbandry was taught at Cornell University by Prof. H. H. Wing when Jimmie Halpin entered college in 1901. When Liberty Hyde Bailey was made Dean of the College of Agriculture in 1903, he persuaded James E. Rice to come to Ithaca and teach poultry husbandry. Professor Rice, for a number of years had been preaching better poultry methods over New York State for the Farmers Institute. So little definite information about poultry raising was available fifty years ago that teachers had to "start from scratch." Jimmie Halpin says that he can still see Professor Rice standing before that first class, dissertating from Darwin's Origin of Species and from a History of Plymouth Rock Chickens. During the summer vacation in 1904, Jimmie Halpin worked on the Rankin, pioneer, commercial duck farm at Marblehead, Massachusetts. It was the success at this farm that led growers in western New York, in New Jersey, in Pennsylvania and on Long Island to commercially raise ducks. After graduation, in 1905, Jimmie accepted a job at Rhode Island State College, to work under Dr. Cooper Curtice. The college was then known as the Rhode Island College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts. Cooper Curtice was then doing that pioneer research to find out how to control blackhead with turkeys and chickens. Blackhead disease was then practically eliminating turkey growing from eastern and a little later from midwestern farms. Jimmie Halpin helped with

Downloaded from http://ps.oxfordjournals.org/ at colostateuniv on June 28, 2015

women. A New York State farm boy, James Garfield Halpin, with the blood of Irish and Scotch forbears in his veins, during the formative years of his education, came in contact with a great extension man, a great scientist and research man, and a great administrator. James E. Rice, the "super-extensionist" of the poultry industry, came to Cornell University at the beginning of James Halpin's junior year. "Jimmie," as he is known to all the college poultry folk, was the first student at Cornell to major in poultry husbandry. When Jimmie left Cornell his next contact was with Dr. Cooper Curtice at Rhode Island State College, Kingston, Rhode Island. From this great research man— veterinarian and parasitologist—Jimmie learned that "one must search for truth with all one's soul." His next contact was with that long time agricultural teacher, dean of agriculture, and college president, Robert Sidey Shaw of Michigan State College. The influence of these men has, through all these years, been apparent in the life and daily work of Jimmie Halpin. The several generations removed grandparents of Jimmie Halpin settled at the south end of Lake Seneca—one of the "Finger Lakes"—before the Revolution. The Couchs, the Robinsons, the Latins, were Wesleyans, Methodists and Episcopalians from Scotland. The Halpins came to that settlement by way of Prince Edward Island and Canada, from Ireland. The others came by way of Vermont and Connecticut. They were farmers with a trade. Some were teachers, others shoemakers, tanners, blacksmiths, carpenters, preachers, and "what have you need of?" experts. Near Odessa, New York, where Jimmie

J. G. HALPIN

After one year at Rhode Island, Jimmie Halpin went to the Michigan Agricultural College (now, Michigan State) to become the first head of what is now the poultry husbandry department, in July, 1906. Robert Sidey Shaw, Michigan State College, professor of agriculture from 1902 to 1908, dean of agriculture from 1908 to 1921 and for several years acting president, then president of the college from 1928 to 1941, was a real leader of men and a fine college administrator. Jimmie Halpin seems to have also acquired some of the sly wit and keen sense of humorous values in everyday living from Robert Sidey Shaw. The memory of those turkeys in Rhode Island which, when confined, had leg weakness led Jimmie Halpin to do his first research studying the protein and mineral requirements of chicks. Nothing very definite came of this, except that while cooperating with the state geologist

he was able to demonstrate that some Michigan limestone was a satisfactory source of shell material for laying pullets. The big thing that happened at Michigan, while Jimmie was there, was the start of Experiment Station work on artificial lighting. This was during the fall of 1907. Two pens of hens and two of late pullets were used. The lighted pen of hens finished the molt and laid many more eggs than the unlighted group. Some of the newspapers of that time made a lot of fun out of this work. One Chicago paper had a cartoon depicting an old man going out to the hen house with a kerosene lamp and saying "It is time to get up, girls!" In spite of the adverse criticism, the use of lights came into use quite rapidly as electricity became available on the farms. Up to the year 1909, the University of Wisconsin had never owned a chicken. It, like most of the western agricultural colleges, had not established a poultry husbandry department. The members of the Wisconsin Poultry Association and a number of other fancier organizations had been advocating establishing such a department at Madison. They offered help to get such started. They agreed to donate breeding stock if the University Regents would erect buildings, and hire a man to teach poultry husbandry to the students. There were very few men in those days who were well trained in poultry husbandry. The regents of the University approved the recommendation of Dean H. L. Russell and hired Jimmie Halpin of Michigan. Dean Russell, a graduate of Wisconsin in the class of 1888, after studying at several foreign universities and receiving doctorate degree at Johns Hopkins University, returned to Madison as bacteriologist. He was Dean of Agriculture from 1907 to 1931, and one of the great Deans of Agriculture. The thing that made the University of

Downloaded from http://ps.oxfordjournals.org/ at colostateuniv on June 28, 2015

this research which was later used as the foundation of modern turkey raising. In the trials at Kingston, it was found that if young poults were put out in experiment station poultry yards they would be sick with blackhead by the time they were 21 days of age. If other poults of the same hatch were put in the brooder house they would not have blackhead, but would eventually die of leg weakness (rickets). A third experimental group raised on clean ground, over in the college aboretum, would live and thrive. It was shown that chickens could be carriers of the parasite causing blackhead, so that if one was to raise turkeys successfully he had to have clean ground or equipment that had not been contaminated with droppings of infected birds, either chickens or turkeys. It took the poultry industry fifteen years after that work was done to begin to realize the significance of that pioneer research.

931

932

J. G. HALPIN

Robert M. LaFollette and Justice E. Ray Stevens of the Wisconsin Supreme Court, and some others, each gave a breeding pen of their best birds. Jimmie Halpin operated his first incubators in the east end of the new livestock pavilion in the spring of 1910. The chicks were carried in baskets over to the colony houses, and placed under kerosene brooders. The chick box had not been devised. His first teaching was a course in poultry husbandry during the fall semester of 1909. The class met Saturday mornings, 8 A.M. to 10 A.M. Records reveal that 69 students registered for this course. Research was started on avian tuberculosis in cooperation with Professor Hastings of the Agricultural Bacteriology Department. Later Dr. Beach of the veterinary Science staff joined in this project. The group made careful studies of the disease, methods of detecting diseased fowl, and most important, worked out a practical plan that many farmers used to rid the premises of the disease, or else reduce the loss to a minimum. During the 1910 era there was much argument over the use of sour milk in animal feeding. Jimmie Halpin cooperated with the Dairy Industry and Animal Husbandry Departments in feeding whole milk, skim milk, and buttermilk, as additions to grain mixtures. Among the findings that came out was the fact that, with certain types of diet, whole milk was extremely useful. In fact, it was later demonstrated that fairly satisfactory chicks could be raised on whole milk, shavings, and sunshine. Sweet milk was preferred by the chicks—a good supplement. By 1911, some of the buildings on the research plant were ready to use. (This plant was located for 20 years on the site of the present U. S. Forest Products Laboratory Building.) The first research project had to do with the mineral require-

Downloaded from http://ps.oxfordjournals.org/ at colostateuniv on June 28, 2015

Wisconsin attractive to Jimmie Halpin in 1909 was that Professors Babcock and Hart had some feeding experiments under way with cattle. They were really just getting started with the work that later helped to make the Department of Agricultural Chemistry known all over the world. Stephen M. Babcock had first placed Edwin B. Hart in charge of a feeding experiment on May 1, 1907. Four groups of young heifers were fed four different rations: wheat—corn—oats—and mixed wheat, corn and oats. The laboratory chemist was E. V. McCollum. After forty-one years as Head of Wisconsin's Poultry Husbandry Department, Jimmie Halpin sits in his office—in the laboratory building built forty years ago— and watches chickens roaming over the same orchard meadow his first lot of chickens roamed forty years ago. There have been chickens raised on that land each and^every year. A dozen colony houses and a dozen breeding pens were completed on this old sheep pasture during the fall of 1909. The basement of the Poultry Building and the first floor concrete were completed that fall but the upper structure remained to be finished in 1910. I t took a lot of ingenuity, patience, and hard work to start a poultry research project and to do poultry husbandry teaching forty years ago. A willingness to face many disappointments and failures was also a prime requisite. With it all one had to have a keen sense of humor and great imagination. The breeders of Wisconsin had agreed to donate breeding poultry. To Jimmie Halpin's surprise, leading White Plymouth Rock breeders sent chickens so that he had a pen of 12 cockerels and one female. Other breeders sent in specimens of other breeds in about the same proportion. He fared best with the Rhode Island Reds. The late U. S. Senator

J. G. HALPIN

omitted all the chicks died by about six weeks." Discussing leg weakness in chickens they reported: "Cod'liver oil supplied the needed vitamin complex to make inside rations practical so that chicks could be reared inside at will." Several items reporting poultry research, as gleaned from Wisconsin Bulletin No. 362, for year 1922-23, reveal the progress which had been made in nutritional studies. The following are some of the headings of reports: "direct sunlight is factor in animal growth." "Lack of sunlight and antirachitic vitamine stunts growing chicks." "Sunlight makes chicks grow." "Growth of chick affected by ration of hens." "Color of egg yolk affected by feed." "Feeding thyroid affects plumage of fowls." It was in the spring of 1925 that a paper was published in the Journal of Biological Chemistry regarding "The influence of ultraviolet light on the production, hatchability and fertility of the egg," along with "The nutritional requirements of baby chicks." A report on the chicks' requirement for vitamin A was published the year previous in the same journal.

In all this fundamental research, by the Department of Agricultural Chemistry of the University of Wisconsin, Jimmie Halpin played an active cooperative part. If Jimmie Halpin had known as much When we think of or talk with him, we about vitamin D in 1905 as he did in cannot help but remember the statement 1921, he could have helped the eminent of Samuel Johnson in his "Boswell's Life" scientist, Dr. Cooper Curtice, grow those when he wrote: "Knowledge is of two Rhode Island experimental turkeys and kinds.. We know a subject ourselves, or we chickens without the resulting leg weak- know where we can find information upon ness. Wisconsin Bulletin No. 352, year it." In another book Johnson also wrote: 1921-22, reported that the "feeding of "Curiosity is one of the most permanent eggs to baby chicks gets results." It also and certain characters of a vigorous intelreported that Doctors Hart and Steen- lect." Jimmie Halpin is, and has been, bock and J. G. Halpin found that "by add- ever seeking new information. His curing eggs to a ration of white corn, mid- iosity is boundless. He has an encyclodlings, salt, grit and bone, good chicks pedic mind, is a photographic reader of were grown inside. When the eggs were books—cultivated as a time saver—and

Downloaded from http://ps.oxfordjournals.org/ at colostateuniv on June 28, 2015

ments of laying pullets, and later the mineral requirements of growing chicks. Jimmie Halpin as a boy must have often wondered just what the minerals were in those spring waters at Watkin's Glen that helped sick folk get well. He had to do some research work with minerals in nutrition. The second line of research undertaken at the new research plant was copied from the work already in progress under the direction of Professors Babcock and Hart with the feeding of Durham cattle. Whereas, four lots of cattle were used, there were six lots of chickens. One lot was fed corn, another oats, another wheat, another barley, and two other lots had rations of one-half corn and one-half wheat, and one half oats and one-half barley. From these two lines of research, coupled with milk feeding studies, there began the forty years of work, under the direction of Jimmie Halpin, studying the basic nutritional requirements of poultry. This work with poultry played a very important part in the world-known vitamin discoveries made at the University of Wisconsin. Poultry could be grown more quickly than larger animals. The discovery of vitamin D and the values of minerals and calcium were real contributions to mankind.

933

934

NUNC DIMITTIS

entitled, "Professor at the Breakfast Table." In one place he really describes Jimmie Halpin. He'would term him "A man that knows men, in the street, at their work, human nature in its shirtsleeves—a man who has found out that there are plenty of praying rogues and swearing saints in the world." Jimmie Halpin is also a very modest man. He likes to give the other fellow full credit. Such is strikingly revealed in the chronological listing of research reports of the Poultry Department of the University of Wisconsin. Of the 88 listed publications, appearing during the forty years, in scientific journals, the name of J. G. Halpin appeared but twice as the first author. James Garfield Halpin has served the industry he chose, faithfully and well for more than forty-five years. He has had that philosophy which someone has said "Which makes us to ourselves and to all about us, better; and at the same time more content, patient, calm and more ready for all decent and pure enjoyment."

Nunc Dimittis Horace gttooob Horace Atwood, Professor Emeritus, West Virginia University died on August 23, 1950 at the age of 82 years. He attended the first meeting at Cornell in 1908 and was a charter member of the organization then termed the International, later the American, Association of Instructors and Investigators in Poultry Husbandry, now known as the Poultry Science Association. He was president in 1913 and was made a Fellow in 1934. He was also a charter member of the West Virginia Chapter of Sigma Xi.

Horace Atwood was, in every sense of the word, a charter member of the Poultry Science Association. Prior to the first annual conference of Poultry Instructors and Investigators he was appointed, by unanimous vote, as chairman of the committee to prepare the program. At that first conference, held at Cornell University on July 23, 24 and 25, 1908, and during which the International Association of Instructors and Investigators in Poultry Husbandry was organized on July 25th, he was elected a Director for 1908-10. At

Downloaded from http://ps.oxfordjournals.org/ at colostateuniv on June 28, 2015

is a stickler for absolute facts. His desire "to know," during the past forty-five years, as a research man and a teacher of poultry husbandry, has kept him young of mind and young in spirit. He is still seeking the answer to puzzling poultry problems. There are three sons in the James G. Halpin family, to carry on the family name. John Halpin, a graduate at Wisconsin, is presently foreman of the Ted Matthew's Poultry Farm, Mt. Horeb, Wisconsin. Robert Halpin, also a graduate of Wisconsin has charge of the market egg extension work at the Texas A. & M. College, College Station, Texas. He graduated as a bacteriologist. James Halpin (Junior) has just finished his college work, winning Freshman, High Sophomore and Senior Honors, at Wisconsin and started on graduate work with plant pathology. He is a Marine veteran of the island campaigns of the Pacific, Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote much sound philosophy in that little volume