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.