Page 8 - World Trade Center Delaware - 2019

HOW A POULTRY EMPIRE WAS HATCHED
It may have begun with a shipping error at Dagsboro hatchery
Most Delawareans know that Delaware produces chickens. However, few know that Sussex County is the No. 1 poultry producer in the entire country.
“The poultry industry is the quiet economic engine humming along in the background,” says Delmarva Poultry Industry Inc.’s James Fisher.
In 2018, Delaware produced almost 264 million broilers, or 273 chickens per Delaware resident. These chickens are big; they weigh an average to 7.2 pounds, a full pound over the U.S. average and like all chickens in the United States are raised without the use of hormones or steroids. Since the average person eats about 93 pounds of chicken each year, most of the chicken we raise is sold out of state, helping to contribute to the $3.3 billion in total economic activity resulting from the poultry industry. How, exactly, did Delaware become such
a poultry powerhouse? For that, we need to go back to 1923 and a small town in southern Delaware, the birthplace of the broiler chicken industry.
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Mrs. Cecile Steele
In the town of Ocean View, Mrs. Cecile Steele ordered a brood of 50 chicks for her backyard egg business from a local Dagsboro hatchery. However, the hatchery sent 10 times as many chicks as she ordered. Instead of sending the 450 extra chicks back to the breeder, she built a chicken house, and 18 weeks later, sold full-grown birds at 62 cents per pound for