It's very interesting what he tells us about those times. Although this is considered an American discovery, due to the poultry farmer Waldorf, who was the first to adopt this regime, it had already been practiced in Europe, especially in Spain, for at least 216 years.

So says a booklet reprinted in Madrid in the year of 1803, 100 pages, written by Don Francisco Dieste and Buil, which devotes four pages to explaining how the village of Castile managed to harvest eggs in the winter through the provision of a ration of supplementary grain to chickens in the long nights of fall and winter.

To do this, they would enter the chicken coop at midnight carrying a light, thereby forcing the chickens to wake up and eat; however, after a few days, as soon as they entered with the light, the chickens would come down from their perches on their own and eat.

Today, it is commonplace among farmers that are only dedicated to the production of eggs for consumption, with the advantage that the light we have is much more intense than that of the older oil lamps that you had to use in the village of those times.

Now, one explanation—a very natural one, to be sure—is that, since the days are short and the nights are long in the fall and winter, the chickens go too many hours without eating; consequently, because they need a greater amount of nutrients to replenish their bodily functions, they do not have enough left over to be converted into eggs.

That is the explanation that has been given so far and the one that Dieste and Buil already offered in their 19th-century booklet.