A delivery of 500 chickens. Only room in the backyard coop for 50 of them. An Ocean View, Del. family with a problem - and then an inspired solution: build more coops quickly, and market the chickens for their meat, not their eggs.
That's the scene, back in 1923, that led to the modern chicken industry we're a part of here in 2023. The story of Cecile and Wilmer Steele, the heads of that Ocean View household, has been told and retold, of course. But it is worth treading this ground once more on the 100th anniversary of the most consequential shipping error in U.S. agricultural history. As William H. Williams put it in Delmarva's Chicken Industry: 75 Years of Progress, a 1998 book we published:
Each year Cecile Steele would order fifty new chicks to replace losses in her laying flock. In 1923 Vernon Steen, who operated a small hatchery in Dagsboro, mistakenly sent Cecile five hundred chicks, or ten times what she ordered. Rather than send the excess chicks back to Steen, she initially housed them in a piano box while Roland Beauchamp, a lumberman from Berlin, Md., built a small shed to house her new flock... Eighteen weeks later the 387 survivors, weighing about two-and-one-half pounds apiece, were sold by Cecile at sixty-two cents a pound [about $11 a pound in today's dollars] to a local buyer, who then shipped them north to be consumed in restaurants and hotels.
Others took note, and got into the chicken business themselves. By 1928, there were 500 broiler growers on Delmarva, mostly in Sussex County. As Williams noted in the book, many factors that gave Delmarva a competitive edge in raising broilers then still apply today: A mild climate (compared to Northeastern states), cheap construction and labor costs, close proximity to major urban markets, and a willingness on the part of banks, hatcheries and feed suppliers to provide credit or assume some capital costs and market risks on growers‘ behalf.
Today, chicken is the most popular protein in the U.S., and the meat chicken industry has advanced a great deal since 1923.
Delmarva Chicken Festival, circa 1950.
There are more than 1,300 family-owned farms on Delmarva, where families live and farm by raising broiler chickens. Just as it has been for generations, chicken farming is a way for Delmarva families to make a living from the land - and provide food for all of us.
Delmarva's chicken companies provide good-paying jobs for more than 18,000 people, in fields from engineering to poultry processing to finance to veterinary medicine. By partnering with independent family farms and hundreds of allied businesses, the chicken industry on Delmarva delivers $13.6 billion in economic impact and supports more than 51,900 careers.
Farmers and everyone else involved in putting chicken on your tables cares deeply about protecting the environment and raising chicken sustainably. It takes 75% fewer resources to produce the same amount of chicken today than it did in the 1960s, and more than 95% of poultry litter is recycled and reused as organic, locally-produced fertilizer for crops like corn, soybeans, wheat and mushrooms. Together, we've reduced our impact on the Chesapeake Bay and Delmarva's air and water.
Cecile Steele, pictured, builds Delmarva's first broiler chicken farm after accidentally receiving 10 times as many chicks as she had ordered for her backyard flock of egg-laying hens.
Within five years, about 500 farms near the Steeles had transitioned to growing broiler chickens; at this point, most growers produce about 2,000 chickens a year.
Raising chickens in long, low houses, the average Delmarva grower now produces about 17,000 chickens each year.
The U.S. government places a 'freeze' on Delmarva broilers, reserving the right to buy the chicken for the war effort.
Delmarva Chicken Festival Inc. is formed and launches the Delmarva Chicken of Tomorrow Festival to promote the breeding of chickens suited for sale to grocery stores. A year later, the event would be renamed the Delmarva Chicken Festival, and would be held for decades as a free, popular event.
The Eastern Shore Poultry Growers Exchange first auctions chicken flocks for sale in Selbyville, Del.
Delmarva Chicken Festival, Inc. is renamed Delmarva Poultry Industry, Inc. and charged with carrying out an even broader program of support for Delmarva's chicken industry, including research support, publicity, and lobbying. An office with full-time employees was established in Selbyville and was moved to Georgetown the following year.
Townsends, Inc. becomes the first vertically integrated chicken company on Delmarva, combining feed production, growout, and processing under one company.
Perdue opens its first processing plant, expanding beyond its long-held feed processing, hatchery and oilseed enterprises.
Allen Family Foods, founded in 1919 as a Seaford, Del. hatchery, purchases its first chicken processing plant in Cordova, Md. The company would later be sold and renamed Allen Harim Foods.
Mountaire Farms, then based in Arkansas, purchases the H&H Poultry processing plant in Selbyville, Del. Later, it would expand on Delmarva (and to North Carolina) by purchasing processing plants and feed mills.
McDonald's adds Chicken McNuggets to their menu, one of the most successful fast-food launches ever. McDonald's hadn't invented the chicken nugget, though - that honor goes to Robert C. Baker of Cornell University back in the 1960s.
Tyson Foods buys the Holly Farms processing plant in Temparanceville, Va., giving what is now the U.S.'s largest chicken producer a Delmarva foothold.
Trade deals struck between the U.S. and the Soviet Union open up Soviet markets to exported American chicken - specifically, legs and thighs. Known as nozhky boosha, the imports are a hit compared to smaller, less meaty Soviet-grown chicken.
Jim Perdue becomes Perdue's chairman, the third generation in his family to lead the company.
Nipple drinkers, tunnel ventilation, and computerized controllers become widely adopted on chicken farms, modernizing the process of raising broilers.
Chick-fil-A sales pass the $2 billion mark for the first time, a sign of how popular chicken has become for Americans.
DCA creates a vegetative environmental buffers program, helping hundreds of growers add these green features to their farms.
Amick Farms purchases a Hurlock, Md. processing plant, establishing itself as a Delmarva-based chicken company.
The Harim Group purchases Allen Family Foods, a long-established processing company on Delmarva, relaunching the company as Allen Harim.
Our organization rebrands itself as Delmarva Chicken Association, emphasizing the importance of our broad-based membership of growers, allied businesses, and chicken companies.
DCA welcomes hundreds of members to our first Booster BBQ, a new tradition helping us honor Outstanding Growers and other exceptional people in the chicken community.
Today, 100 years after Cecile Steele's first effort at raising broiler chickens, the chicken community is an integral part of Delmarva's economy and culture. The average four-house broiler farm today raises about 500,000 chickens a year, and chicken contributes $4.5 billion in economic impact.
end timeline
