Postcard from the Past: Hurrah for the Hen

A column in the Casper Daily Tribune dated April 12, 1927 reads:

Somehow or another, people, as a rule, have not regarded the hen as a very important element in the wealth of the nation, nor has poultry been considered one of the major products of the farm or the country at large. 

Yet, in 1923 the farm value of poultry and poultry products exceeded the value of all the cattle raised by $1.5 million. 

They were worth nearly $8 million more than all of the wheat raised and approximately $4 million more than all of the fruit and fruit products of the entire U.S. 

Not so bad for the hen, which only a few years ago was expected to do little more than to provide pin money for the farm wife.

Every day, poultry is becoming more and more a favorite food product, so that from 1920-24, the number of chickens in the U.S. increased 43 percent, while during the same period, the number of eggs produced increased 20 percent. 

The value of poultry products in the country, according to Harry B. Lewis, a writer for National Geographic Magazine, is exceeded at the present time by only five other agricultural products – dairy products, corn, cotton, hay and forage and swine. 

The poultry population of the north-central states, generally referred to as the Corn Belt, is estimated at two million.

Raising poultry commercially has gone forward at a tremendous rate in the last few years, and perhaps the greatest example of what is being accomplished along this line is found in the Petaluma Valley of California. 

This valley is but 12 miles wide and 30 miles long, and in this area in 1926, White Leghorn hens produced pure white eggs in sufficient numbers to fill 1,400 railroad cars. 

These were shipped to the markets on the Atlantic Coast, where they commanded the highest prices because of their color and the fact they were accurately graded to size. 

Last year, one egg out of every 50 laid in the U.S. came from Petaluma, Calif. In the height of the season, one plant there handles and candles as many as a million eggs a day.

One reason for the increasing popularity of poultry is it is a crop which never fails if properly attended to. 

The season may be backward for field crops and these may be blighted by drought or other dispensations of fortune or climate, but the poultry man who knows his business and attends to it is certain of his crop of eggs and table birds. 

Furthermore, the hen flourishes from one border of the country to the other, and while some farms may have but a few, others may have hundreds, the total mounting to an astonishing figure. 

For years, the hog was pointed to as the mortgage lifter, but this animal has little on biddy at the present time.