Financial History Issue 114 (Summer 2015) | Page 12
EDUCATORS’ PERSPECTIVE
Illustrations from The History of Hen Fever: A Humorous Record, published in 1855.
Dominques, while Rhode Island Reds are
a cross between Leghorns and the Asian
varieties of chicken that were so popular
during the hen fever.
For centuries chicken was an expensive
meal, but as Lawler notes, “Real farmers — that is, men — raised sheep and
cattle.” Every farm had chickens, which
were kept primarily for egg production
and were tended to primarily by women.
When a hen got too old to produce eggs, it
was butchered and served for dinner, but
no one raised chickens primarily for meat.
The commercial broiler business began
by accident, according to University of
Delaware extension agent J. Franklin
Gordy, when Celia Steele of Delaware
ordered 50 chicks in 1923 with the intention of maintaining her “small flock of
layers.” When the hatchery mistakenly
sent her 500 chicks, Mrs. Steele chose to
raise the extra chicks instead of returning
them to the hatchery. When they matured,
she sold the 397 surviving birds to a local
buyer for a tidy profit, then turned around
and ordered 1,000 more chicks for the
next season. Thus a profitable new industry was born.
In spite of this, chicken still played a
secondary role to beef and pork. “For 200
years,” wrote historian Roger Horowitz,
“Americans considered chicken a luxury
meal served only on special occasions.”
Moreover, prior to the 1940s, both egg
production and meat production were
seasonal.
“Fluffy little chicks and Easter both
come in the Spring,” wrote A.C. Monahan
in the April 20, 1946 Science Newsletter.
“Easter,” he continued, “is at the height
of the natural hatching season. It is also
at the height of the normal laying days,
which perhaps accounts in part for the
heavy use of eggs at Easter for Sunday
morning breakfast, customary in some
sections, and for the Easter Monday eggrolling. But the association is, perhaps,
diminishing. Agricultural scientists seem
never content with nature’s ways and are
producing fluffy little chicks at all seasons
of the year so frying chickens will always
be obtainable.