This is no longer practiced modern meat chickens are a different breed. Two kinds of poultry were generally offered: broilers or "spring chickens," young male chickens, a byproduct of the egg industry, which were sold when still young and tender (generally under 3 pounds live weight) and "fowls" or "stewing hens," also a byproduct of the egg industry, which were old hens past their prime for laying. Poultry was shipped live or killed, plucked, and packed on ice (but not eviscerated). For example, Herbert Hoover's campaign used the slogan "A chicken in every pot" during the 1928 United States presidential election, appealing to a middle-class sense of affluence in the Post WWI years. Prior to about 1910, chicken was served primarily on special occasions or Sunday dinner. However, poultry meat supply continued to lag demand, and poultry was expensive. The culling and slaughter of non-egg laying chickens created a source of poultry meat. After a few false starts, such as the Maine Experiment Station's failure at improving egg production, success was shown by Professor James Dryden at the Oregon Experiment Station. Egg production was largely increased by scientific breeding rather than industrial scale. With a steady demand for eggs, efforts to create a poultry egg industry began in earnest, but raising poultry remained challenging early efforts at industrial-scale indoor poultry houses led to problems with diseases like coccidiosis, Marek's disease, and Vitamin D deficiency were not well understood. Except in hot weather, eggs can be shipped and stored without refrigeration for some time before going bad this was important in the days before widespread refrigeration. Eggs were sold into urban markets, where residents did not have chickens to provide eggs for themselves. laid 237 eggs in first year at the Maine Agricultural Experiment Station (1903)Īs the United States urbanized, demand for eggs grew. Poultry shows spread interest and understanding, with 88% of all farmers having chickens by 1910.
Soon after poultry keeping gained the attention of agricultural researchers (around 1896), improvements in nutrition and management made poultry keeping more profitable and businesslike. Such feedstuffs were in limited supply, especially in the winter, and this tended to regulate the size of the farm flocks. Farm flocks tended to be small because the hens largely fed themselves through foraging, with some supplementation of grain, scraps, and waste products from other farm ventures. Chickens remained primarily to provide eggs, mostly to the farmer ( subsistence agriculture), with commercialization still largely unexplored. Cross-breeding between English and Asian birds created new breeds still common today, like the Barred Plymouth Rock. įollowing the Treaty of Wanghia between the US and China in 1844, oriental poultry breeds were imported to New England, and Rhode Island became the nation's first major poultry center. A United States Department of the Interior census in 1840 found American farmers had a total combined poultry flock valued at approximately $12 million ($311 million in today's dollars). Originally, the primary value in poultry keeping was eggs, and meat was considered a byproduct of egg production. In the United States, chickens were raised primarily on family farms or in some cases, in poultry colonies, such as Judge Emery's Poultry Colony until about 1960.
"The best in the world" White Plymouth Rocks, 1910
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