The Cackelator is an electronic instrument housed in a leather luggage-style case. It was used by Ag-Way Coop representatives as an early on-the-farm "computer" to formulate poultry feed mixtures based on flock production factors such as body weight and egg weight. This briefcase-sized device was carried to the farm and used by the feed representative and flock owner to determine nutritional inputs that would provide the highest net income for the poultry farmer.

The James M. Gwin Collection contains approximately 50,000 items of poultry information resources. It consists primarily of business correspondence pertaining to several poultry associations, catalogs from poultry equipment manufacturing firms, documents about early breeders in the poultry industry, egg and poultry legislation, papers on industry meetings held in various states of the United States, and miscellaneous publication clippings related to the egg and poultry industry.