This sheet steel poultry feeder was manufactured in Sioux City, Iowa by the Tweet-Bernard Company. The red and yellow silk-screened advertisement on the side is for H-N “Nick Chick” Leghorn layer chickens. Leghorns are white chickens with rose colored combs and are prolific egg layers.
H-N Layer Breeding Company was founded in 1945 in Kirkland, Washington. To start his own poultry breeding business, geneticist Arthur Heisdorf developed the “Nick Chick” Leghorns. Heisdorf had a 12,000-layer poultry farm. To improve his base breeding stock, he imported various strains of laying chickens to breed. He soon discovered the genetics that combined well (nicked) with the Leghorns he was using, and the Nick Chick was born.
In 1947, Heisdorf partnered with Cliff and Bert Nelson and established the Heisdorf and Nelson Poultry Breeding Farms. In 1957, H-N gave license to Lohmann and Company, Cuxhaven, Germany to distribute “Nick Chick” breeding stock in Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. In 1971 Pfizer acquired H-N and in 1987 H-N was sold to Lohmann. It has since been known as H-N International GmbH.