Maps of us poultry production in United States

Maps of us poultry production in United States

	Broilers: Inventory by State, US

 History

In the United Statesmarker, chickens were raised primarily on family farms until about 1960. Originally, the primary value in poultry keeping was eggs, and meat was considered a byproduct of egg production. Its supply was less than the demand, and poultry was expensive. 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.

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. Such feedstuffs were in limited supply, especially in the winter, and this tended to regulate the size of the farm flocks. Soon after poultry keeping gained the attention of agricultural researchers (around 1896), improvements in nutrition and management made poultry keeping more profitable and businesslike.

Prior to about 1910, chicken was served primarily on special occasions or Sunday dinner. Poultry was shipped live or killed, plucked, and packed on ice (but not eviscerated). The "whole, ready-to-cook broiler" wasn't popular until the 1950s, when end-to-end refrigeration and sanitary practices gave consumers more confidence. Before this, poultry were often cleaned by the neighborhood butcher, though cleaning poultry at home was a commonplace kitchen skill.

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. This is no longer practiced; modern meat chickens are a different breed. Egg-type chicken carcasses no longer appear in stores.

The major milestone in 20th century poultry production was the discovery of Vitamin-D (named in 1922), which made it possible to keep chickens in confinement year-round. Before this, chickens did not thrive during the winter (due to lack of sunlight), and egg production, incubation, and meat production in the off-season were all very difficult, making poultry a seasonal and expensive proposition. Year-round production lowered costs, especially for broilers.

At the same time, egg production was increased by scientific breeding. After a few false starts, such as the Maine Experiment Station's failure at improving egg production, success was shown by Professor Dryden at the Oregon Experiment Station.

Improvements in production and quality were accompanied by lower labor requirements. In the 1930s through the early 1950s, 1,500 hens was considered to be a full-time job for a farm family. In the late Fifties, egg prices had fallen so dramatically that farmers typically tripled the number of hens they kept, putting three hens into what had been a single-bird cage or converting their floor-confinement houses from a single deck of roosts to triple-decker roosts. Not long after this, prices fell still further and large numbers of egg farmers left the business. This marked the beginning of the transition from family farms to larger, vertically integrated operations.

Robert Plamondon reports that the last family chicken farm in his part of Oregon, Rex Farms, had 30,000 layers and survived into the Nineties. But the standard laying house of the surviving operations is around 125,000 hens.

This fall in profitability was accompanied by a general fall in prices to the consumer, allowing poultry and eggs to lose their status as luxury foods.

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