024—Lancaster Farming, Saturday, April 19,1980 FELTON, Del. - J Ed ward Mcllvaine was halfway through high school the year the broiler industry was bom. That was back in 1923, the year Mrs. Wilmer Steele of Ocean View, Del., decided to sell her entire flock of spring chickens for meat, rather than keepmg the pullets for her laying flock. That histone decision tnggered a chain of events that revolutionized poultry production in the U.S It’s also the reason for Delaware’s present multi million dollar share of the broiler business. That was 57 years ago With each year that passes, it’s harder to find someone who remembers how it all began. But Ed McDvame, who was honored recently for more than 40 years of ser vice to the Delaware Poultry Improvement Association, remembers quite vividly One of DPIA’s founding members, he’s served as its president, vice president chairman of locals and for Retired poultryman Ed Mcjlvaine recalls he was a teenager driving a horse and wagon to school during the year Delaware's broiler industry was born. Ed Mcllvame helps set up exhibit on early broiler industry that will be on display when Delaware’s farm museum in Dover opens its doors--hopefully later this year Recalling the the broiler of the past 20 years as its treasurer. While Mrs. Steele was raising that first flock of meat birds, he was a teenager busy dividing his tune between chores on the family gram farm near Stockley and school in Georgetown, covering the five miles m-between in a horse-drawn wagon. But by the tune he graduated two years later, he was already supplying hatching eggs to the infant industry. Since then, most of his life has been mvolved with broilers and the people who grow them. A heart attack last July forced him to retire after 38 years as manager of breeder flocks at Townsend’s, Inc., Delaware’s biggest in tegrated broiler company But this experience has hardly clipped his wings. At 72 he’s just a busy as ever collecting photographs and objects to document the early history of the poultry industry. These will be on * y display when the state’s new farm museum in Dover fmalh' opens its doors, hopefully sometime .later this year. In the beginning, he recalls, there wasn’t any year-round broiler production The only time you got broilers or "fryers” was in the spring. The rest of the time you settled for an occasional tough stewing hen Chickens back then were usually the farm wife’s responsibility, he says. Like their neighbors, his mother kept a small flock of Barred Rocks a popular, black and grey speckled all purpose breed. The eggs they laid gave her something to use in trade on her weekly trips to the local country store. Early each spring she would set a batch of eggs under a “broody hen” or two. The pullets that hatched out were added to the laymg flock to replace old hens due to be retired to the stew pot. The young cockerels were fattened up and eaten If you had any extra fryers or “springers,” as they were also called, you might sell these in town. Some were even shipped live by railroad express up to Philadelphia But until Mrs. Steele sold her entire replacement flock this way, nobody realized what a profitable venture this could be. Mclvame says the idea of raising chickens for meat rather than eggs came along just in time to save a lot of Delmarva farmers from financial disaster. Three things happened in the early 1920’s that seriously threatened previous sources of local farm income. The first was range paralysis a disease that attacked the com mercial flocks of White Leghorns used in table egg production on some farms. The second was the failure of a profitable strawberry industry as plants were wiped out by a virus called red stele disease. The third was a decline in the area’s seafood industry, largely due to failure of the oyster harvest on Delaware Bay. Salvation from all three disasters cam' most birth industry unexpectedly, from the barnyard flocks of Mrs. Steele and others. Within a few years there were small independent broiler operations all over Sussex county. To raise all these broilers chicks were needed. So pretty soon some farmers were operating hatcheries. These, of course, needed good fertile eggs, lots of them. It didn’t take much to realize that it was far more profitable to sell eggs to one of these hatcheries than it was to trade them for a “credit slip” at the country store. Before he was out of high school, Ed Mcllvame and his family were producing hatching eggs instead. His first flock was pretty small —-only about 300-400 hens. But as tune went on he added more housing until he had 1500 hens, one of the largest breeder flocks around. At first they delivered the eggs to the hatchery themselves in the family’s Model T Ford Later, a hatchery truck made the rounds, collecting eggs from his and other farms Care of the chickens was still largely the job of the wife and other family members, he recalls Because they were out working the land, he and other farmers didn’t have time to feed the hens and gather eggs The rapid growth of broiler production on the peninsula meant good business for local gram farmers like himself at the start, before the advent of commercial feeds. He remembers mixing feed for his own flock with a shovel, using grain by-products from a nearby water powered grist mills, scraps from a meat rendering plant, and oats grown on the farm Later, in the 30’s and 40’s, commercial feeds were shipped down the peninsula by rail. The mash and chick feed was bagged at first in plain white sacks bearing the company’s tradmark, and then in colorful printed cotton that could be used to make aprons and other things for the home. That’s about the tune they started processing broilers on the peninsula, rather than shipping them live to East Coast markets The first ones were simply killed and plucked in the so-called “New York” style. They were processed in plants left over from 'a by-then defunct tomato industry Sussex county was dotted with these old canneries, he says Besides raising grain and hatching eggs, Mcllvame also worked briefly for the State Board of Agriculture in the 30’s, taking blood samples from hens in breeding flocks around the state in a program aimed at eliminating pullorum, an egg-transmitted disease which took a heavy toll of young broiler chicks “If that program hadn’t been successful,” he says, “the broiler industry could -iever have survived ” (Turn to Page D 26) See your nearest HOLUAIND Dealer for Dependable Equipment and Dependable Service: Airville. PA Airville Farm Service Airville, PA 717-862-3358 Lrtitz. PA Roy A Brubaker quipment 700 Woodcrest Avenue 717 626 7766 ilexandna. PA Clapper Farm Star Route 814-669-4465 Annville.JPA Paul Shovers, Inc BH M Farm Equipment, Inc Loysville, PA RD 1 717-789-3117 717-867-2211 Lynnport, PA Beavertown. 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