Ken Mammarella

Special to The News Journal

An accident turned Sussex County into the nation's most populous county for chickens.

In 1923, Cecile Steele of Ocean View ordered 50 chicks for her egg-laying flock. Vernon Steen of Dagsboro delivered 500, which she chose to nurture, according to William H. Williams' "Delmarva's Chicken Industry: 75 Years of Progress."

Eighteen weeks later, she had 387 birds weighing about 2.5 pounds apiece. They sold for 62 cents a pound – the equivalent $8.61 today. In 1924, she ordered 1,000 birds. And by 1926, she and her husband Wilmer were raising 10,000.

An industry was born of raising chicken for meat. Chicken was not a common menu item then. Most chickens were raised for eggs, and when hens were too old, they were eaten, but the meat was tough. Only during the spring culling of young male chickens called cockerels was tender meet available.

The industry took time to develop. The first chickens weren't that tender; they didn't grow quickly and it took a lot of food for them to get to market weight. Better breeding and care came to the rescue.

Williams says that most sources cite seven factors that encouraged the peninsula's broiler industry:

• The mild climate meant lower heating bills and allowed chickens to spend a lot of outdoors.

• The sandy soil provided good drainage for chicken manure, which helped control disease.

• Many people, experienced with small flocks of egg-layers, knew how to raise chickens.

• Pine forests provided cheap lumber to build chicken houses.

• Labor costs were relatively cheap.

• The peninsula was close to a lot of consumers, making shipping cheap.

• People knew each other and were willing to lend money on just a handshake.

Over the last 90 years, lots has changed, starting with the type of chicken favored. First it was the Leghorn, which was replaced by the meatier Barred Plymouth Rock and Rock Red Cross. The breeds would continue to change, with the goals generally being white feathers (which don't discolor the skin), faster growth, meatier build, more tender meat and other qualities.

By 1989, it says on the plaque marking the site of the first chicken house, growers were producing birds of twice the weight in half the time the Steeles did in 1923. You can see the Steeles' groundbreaking house at the Delaware Agricultural Museum and Village in Dover. Most chickens today are Cornish crosses.

How chickens were raised has changed, too. Early on they roamed a lot outdoors; today, they are raised indoors, in large houses, safe from predators. The scale is immense – Charles Postles of Milford has 120,000 birds in three houses – yet intimate – it's a one-person job, he told delmarvanow.com.

Most processors are vertically integrated, meaning they're involved in the multiple stages needed to go from eggs to the supermarket. The growth in the number of chickens led to the growth in allied industries on the Derlmarva Peninsula, such as farmers growing corn and soybeans to feed chickens.

Fairly early on, farmers realized that chicken manure was a good fertilizer. But there are concerns about too much affecting the environment. That's why Delmarva Poultry Industry and other trade groups emphasize the environmental awareness of the industry.

For example, the Vegetative Environmental Buffers program was started in 2006 to encourage farmers to plant trees and grasses around chicken houses to reduce runoff via air, water and soil.

DO YOU SPEAK CHICKEN?

10 idioms and sayings with the word "chicken," from www.backyardchickens.com and other sources

• A chicken in every pot. This 1928 Republican slogan, about spreading the wealth, resembles a line from William Shakespeare's "Henry IV": "I want there to be no peasant in my kingdom so poor that he cannot have a chicken in his pot every Sunday."

• Chicken feed. An insignificant amount of money.

• Chickens have come home to roost. Your mistakes and problems have caught up with you.

• Chicken out. Give up.

• Chicken scratch. Poor handwriting.

• Does a chicken have lips? This rejoinder rejects what was said before as being dumb.

• Don't count your chickens before they hatch. Don't plan on an outcome before it happens.

• Like a chicken with its head cut off. Running around in a frenzy.

• No spring chicken. Too old.

• Up with the chickens. Awake early. Going to bed with the chickens means going to sleep early.

MEMORABLE MOMENTS IN CHICKEN HISTORY

From William H. Williams' "Delmarva's Chicken Industry: 75 Years of Progress" and other sources

8000 to 5000 B.C.: People in Southeast Asia and India domesticate the chicken.

1000 B.C.: Egyptians figure out how to incubate chickens, turning a bird associated with the pharaohs to something more could enjoy.

161 B.C.: Rome limits chicken consumption to one per meal, "out of concern about moral decay and the pursuit of excessive luxury," Smithsonian writes. Romans also invented the omelet and stuffing.

1500s: Spanish explorers bring chickens to the New World. English settlers later do the same.

1626: in England, Sir Francis Bacon dies of pneumonia, worsened by spending time outdoors experimenting on a chicken carcass: would stuffing it with snow preserve it?

1923: Cecile Steele of Ocean View gets her delivery of 500 chicks. The broiler industry is born.

1936: It's estimated that two-thirds of America's broilers are raised on the Delmarva Peninsula.

1940: George Ellis crosses Barred Plymouth Rock roosters and New Hampshire hens to create the Delaware chicken. The Delaware and a cross with the New Hampshire dominate for two decades.

1942: A quarter of Delmarva's broilers are shipped live, down from almost all at the industry's start.

1943: The Army on July 21 sets up a checkpoint on the du Pont Highway near Dover to look for chickens being illegally sent to black markets to avoid price restrictions established in 1942.

1944: Six chicken plants solve their labor shortage by building a prisoner-of-war camp for 300 Germans just outside Georgetown and investing in more machinery.

1948: The National Chicken of Tomorrow contest, which was instrumental in developing the modern broiler breeds of chickens, is judged in Georgetown. It ends a three-year push to breed meatier chickens with bigger breasts that the University of Delaware and Georgetown Ag Station played a key role in. Black-feathered birds from California win.

1950: The largest frying pan in the world debuts at the Delmarva Chicken Festival, in Dover. It was retired in 1987 and later donated to the Georgetown Historical Society. Veterinarian Hiram Lasher establishes the peninsula's first big private avian laboratory.

1952: The Eastern Shore Poultry Growers Exchange opens in Selbyville, later adding satellite venues. An auction for broilers runs until 1969.

1962: Almost all chicken is sold as whole birds; 30 years later, almost all chicken is sold as parts.

1964: Another delivery mistake – wings, not necks – leads Teressa Bellissimo, of the Anchor Bar in Buffalo, New York, to invent Buffalo wings. The wings were halved, deep-fried, adorned with hot sauce and served with celery and blue cheese dressing. (Other origin stories involve Bellissimo creating the combo for her son and other bar patrons, without the mistaken order.)

1966: The universities of Delaware and Maryland are among the sponsors of the first annual conference on chicken diseases, building on work that staffers have doing for decades.

1968: Frank Perdue, the "tough man" behind a tender chicken, debuts in radio ads. Other companies follow with their own brands, often more yellow, because that's what New Yorkers prefer.

1983: McDonald's adds Chicken McNuggets. They're based on 1950s work by a Cornell scientist.

1992: Chicken consumption surpasses beef consumption in the United States. Chicken had tops pork consumption in 1985. Americans consume more chicken than anyone else – 83.6 pounds per person.

FUN FACTS ABOUT 10 BODY PARTS

Beak: We get the term "pecking order," meaning a structure of relationships, from the way that chickens will use their beaks on birds of lower status.

Breasts: Chicken breasts are made of two muscles, with the larger one becoming the breast on menus and the smaller one sold as chicken fingers.

Head: A New York-dressed chicken has been slaughtered and defeathered, but the head, feet and viscera are kept. Sticking up from the top of the head is the comb; hanging below the beak is the wattle.

Fat: The Yiddish word schmaltz refers to rendered chicken fat, used for frying or for spreading on bread (like butter). From that, we get the word "schmaltzy," meaning overly sentimental.

Feathers: A chicken averages 8,000 feathers. Chicken feathers can be transformed into strong, absorbent fibers that have the potential for use in oil filters and disposable diapers.

Feet: Chicken feet are a favorite in some cuisines, particularly the tropics. Chinese restaurants sometimes call them phoenix claws, renamed after a legendary bird.

Gizzard: The gizzard (usually bagged with the liver and heart when whole birds are sold) is the part of the chicken's stomach.

Legs: Australian butchers call the leg-thigh combo chicken Maryland. Don't confuse that with chicken a la Maryland, which was on the last lunch menu of the Titanic (cue Celine Dion); if made as influential chef Auguste Escoffier suggested, it was garnished with bananas (cue weird reaction).

Thighs: The dark meat of thighs and legs has become increasingly popular in the U.S. The reasons include chefs who say it's more flavorful, a texture that holds up better when grilling and Hispanic and Asian immigrants who traditionally prefer dark meat.

Wings: Chicken wings have three parts: the flapper (the thin end, often exported to Asia), the flat (the middle part) and the drumette. The Super Bowl is the top day for enjoying chicken wings. Chickens can't fly very well, but we get the phrase "flew the coop" from them, meaning to escape.

HOW THE BROILER INDUSTRY WORKS

Delmarva Poultry Industry counts four big companies (Allen Family Foods, Mountaire, Perdue and Townsends), 1,700 family farms, 10 feed mills, 13 hatcheries and 10 processing plants that all told employ 14,000.

"Chickens are raised by farm families that own the poultry houses and equipment and provide the day-to-day management needed for the growth, welfare. and productivity of their flocks," the association says. "Poultry companies supply growers with chicks, feed, bedding materials, propane gas to heat the houses, health care for the chicks and technical assistance."

The stages:

1. At a breeder farm, breeder hens lay eggs. Most Delmarva chickens are from North Carolina eggs.

2. At a hatchery, eggs are incubated for three weeks, when the chicks hatch.

3. On the farm, chicks live for about seven weeks in poultry houses. Their diet is usually two-thirds corn and one-fifth soybeans, with extra vitamins and minerals. They can eat as much as they want, whenever they want, as they wonder around the house with thousands of birds.

4. Processors get the chickens when they are as small as 2 pounds (Cornish hens) and as large as 8.5 pounds (roasters). The birds are usually packaged in parts, sometimes with extra flavorings.