Page 59 - Winter2017

a tough life, especially in colder climates. One The changes that Steele and others made The birds
of the main problems was nutritional. Chickens to chickens’ housing conditions required sig-
develop health and disease issues during dark, nificant changes to almost everything about a given the
cold days with scarce food. Heated coops and chicken's diet and life. No longer able to forage, greatest
mountains of nutritionally fortified purchased chickens became dependent on artificial food. amount of
feed were not the norm. The timing was right because soy was beginning
The 1920s ushered in a sea change for the to provide a standardized, cheap, high-protein antibiotics
American chicken. Scientists who were just feed perfect for confined chickens. Founded in gained the
beginning to unravel the world of nutrition 1919, the American Soybean Association was most weight.
discovered vitamins A and D. For a time, cod very happy to have soy become, along with
liver oil became a mainstay of the chicken’s corn, the backbone of the burgeoning confined In this way,
supplemental diet, and mortality rates dropped. poultry production model. antibiotics
6
The incubator, invented a few decades before, Although the poultry production system became the
also began facilitating the creation of hatcher- was starting to solidify, it would take two more
ies across the country. Incubators could (and decades for everything to come together and for backbone
did) supply larger and larger chicken to truly take off. What and constant
numbers of chicks, displacing was needed was the "Chicken companion of
the erratic and unpredictable of Tomorrow" and the tools to
on-farm replacement flock ap- keep it alive. The meteoric rise modern meat
proach. The stage was set to of the industry that followed is production.
4
transform chicken production rivaled only by the gargantuan
from a small-scale side en- size, never before seen, of the
terprise into something more chickens that would result.
economically substantial, and
that is just what Cecile Steele ANTIBIOTICS:
of Delaware did. BACKBONE OF BIG MEAT
If vitamins, soy for animal
STEELE CHICKENS feed and similar advances set
Cecile Steele holds a du- the stage for raising chickens in
bious but important place in confinement, antibiotics stole
poultry history for creating the show. Moving animals off
commercial poultry produc- pasture and into densely popu-
tion. In 1923, she ordered fifty lated barns created disease
chicks, but the company sent five hundred by pressure. Artificial nutrition and supplementa-
accident! She decided to keep them all, rais- tion could offset only a portion of this extra
ing them specifically as meat birds. Things stress. In addition, as production increased,
5
went so well that year and in subsequent years prices dropped, which put immense pressure
that by 1926, Steele had built a barn to house on farmers to raise more with less—less space,
ten thousand birds. Two years later, she raised fewer costs, less care. Questions arose about
almost thirty thousand. Industrial chicken was how far the industrial system could be pushed
born, and it quickly boomed. A decade later, and how much chicken it could produce.
Delaware alone produced seven million broil- A scientist named Thomas Jukes discov-
ers per year. Although Steele’s chickens were ered the solution to these problems: antibiotics.
4
tiny things, weighing only around two pounds, Working at a research facility for Lederle in the
people loved them, even with their relatively 1940s, Jukes was fixated on figuring out what
high price tag. In today’s money, Steele fetched would allow chickens to flourish in confine-
a profitable five dollars per pound for that first ment. It was a pressing question—two world
batch of five hundred chickens. Such high profits wars (with one still ongoing) had produced an
and prices would not last long, however, and the incredibly high demand for protein. Although
steady decline in chicken prices soon began. 4 chicken production had increased immensely in

WINTER 2017 Wise Traditions 59