This article about Delmarva's poultry industry appeared in a special magazine-style publication called "Delmarva Millennium, Volume I," published in October 1999 by Thomson-Chesapeake.Billion-dollar poultry industry traces its roots to 1923 error
By Terry Plowman
Cecile Steele, a hard-working Ocean View, Del., housewife, awaited her order for 50 chicks one spring day in 1923.
Like other farm families throughout the Delmarva Peninsula, the Steeles annually replaced the losses in their flock of laying hens, so they could keep themselves supplied with fresh eggs and sell a few to local markets.
Steele was surprised, however, when a Dagsboro, Del., hatchery sent 10 times the number she had ordered. In a decision that would forever change the economy of Delmarva, Steele kept the entire shipment --and in doing so, she unknowingly launched the broiler industry, which is today a $1.6 billion agribusiness. ("Broiler" is the name for a 3- to 4-pound bird, the standard meat chicken.)
Delmarva's poultry industry grew rapidly in the 1950s.
Steele kept the birds in a piano box, while a carpenter hurriedly built a shed large enough to house the largest, noisiest flock of chickens she ever had.
Eighteen weeks later, when the 387 surviving birds weighed about two-and-a-half pounds each, Steele sold them for 62 cents a pound -- the equivalent of about $5 a pound today.
Steele ordered 1,000 chicks the next year, and her husband, Wilmer, quit his steady job with the Coast Guard in order to help raise them. By 1927 the couple's chicken-house capacity was up to 25,000 birds.
Other farmers took quick notice of the Steeles' success. By 1928 there were about 500 growers in southeastern Sussex County, Del. -- and the broiler industry was off to a fast start.
Chickens as egg-layers
Before the advent of the meat-chicken industry, scrawny, barnyard-scavenging poultry was considered an inferior class of livestock -- their egg-laying was minimal (about 30 eggs a year compared to about 300 today) and their meat was hardly worth the trouble of catching them. In 1837, a Delmarva traveler complained about being served chicken, saying, "There is no dish so often turned away untasted."
In the early 1900s, before the modern poultry industry was born, chickens-as-meat were still an incidental byproduct of egg production. Old hens whose production had waned usually ended up in the family stew pot, as their meat was otherwise too tough to enjoy. Tender young males, called cockerels, were culled from the laying flocks only once a year, and were usually sold to fancy restaurants because they were considered a rare delicacy.
Raising chickens for meat wasn't an entirely new idea, however -- poultry production ventures had been tried in New Jersey, Georgia, Arkansas and New Hampshire. But certain conditions came together on the Delmarva Peninsula that would make it ground zero for the explosion of the meat-chicken industry.
According to William H. Williams, author of Delmarva's Chicken Industry: 75 Years of Progress, the industry thrived because the peninsula offered:
* A mild climate, which reduced heating costs and allowed farmers to let their chickens run free in fenced yards, resulting in healthier birds.
* Sandy soil, which reduced disease by providing good drainage for chicken manure. (This, of course, would lead to pollution of surrounding waterways, a problem facing the industry today.)
* Farmers' experience in growing egg-laying chickens, which was applicable to raising chickens for meat.
* Cheap and available lumber from nearby pine forests, which kept down the cost of chicken houses.
* Cheap labor, an important factor in the labor-intensive business.
* Proximity to metropolitan markets and new highways linking them to Delmarva.
* Easy credit for growers because of the small-town nature of banking on the peninsula.
These conditions led to the initial growth of the broiler industry, which from its epicenter in southeastern Sussex County quickly spread northward into Kent County and southward into Maryland's Worcester, Wicomico, Somerset and Caroline Counties, and into Virginia's Accomack County.
But it took three other factors to make Delmarva the first king of chicken production nationwide: breeding, nutrition and disease control.
Modern developments
Intensive research helped poultry-growing evolve from a farmer's sideline into a modern major industry -- scientists cross-bred various species to create faster-growing, broader-breasted birds, and they refined chicken feed so that much less was required to nourish them to market weight. And perhaps most important, pathologists developed avian medications that reduced disease-related mortality from 20 percent of a flock in the 1920s to only 4 percent today.
Improvements in processing techniques were another major factor in the success of the poultry industry. In the early days, chickens were only defeathered and cleaned, then shipped on ice with head, feet and internal organs intact. Then, in the 1950s, chickens were fully processed so they were ready to cook, but most were still sold whole. It wasn't until the 1970s that automated processing plants produced chicken packaged in parts, a convenience that, along with its affordable price, helped poultry surpass beef as the nation's favorite meat.
Another factor in the growth of the broiler industry was "vertical integration," which is lingo for the management of all facets of production -- "from the egg to the table" -- by one company.
Agribusiness giants such as Perdue, Townsends and Tyson now raise their own hatchlings, provide chicks and feed to farmers under contract, purchase the broilers, process them and ship them. Proponents say this system improves quality control and makes the product more affordable, while critics say it turns farmers from independent business owners into little more than contract laborers.
All of these developments, from breeding a better bird to automated processing, helped increase production throughout Delmarva at a mind-boggling pace -- 50,000 birds in 1925, 95 million in 1948, 280 million in 1967, 490 million in 1987, and 602 million in 1998.
Over those years, the industry has dominated the region's economy, affecting not only growers and processors, but also companies that provide trucking, feed, building materials and other related services and supplies.
Delmarva's broiler industry, with Sussex County still the top-producing county in the U.S., now annually processes products with a wholesale value of more than $1.6 billion -- all of which can be traced back to the 450 extra chicks shipped to Cecile Steele in 1923.