chicken

Chickens were apparently domesticated from the red jungle fowl (Gallus gallus), a native of southeast Asia, thousands of years ago. Humans have been selectively breeding them ever since. Traditionally, chickens were valued mainly for their eggs. Surplus roosters would get eaten, of course, and tough overage laying hens would end up in the stewpot. But your typical chicken was a stringy, hardy bird whose job was to stay alive and to lay eggs.

Raising chickens en masse just for eating started in 1923 with Celia Steele of southern Delaware, somewhat by accident. She wanted to set up a small flock of egg-laying chickens to supplement her husband Wilmer’s Coast Guard salary. She placed an order for 50 chicks, but it was mistakenly heard as 500. When she got this huge shipment, she thought fast and decided to raise them to eating size (“broilers”) and then immediately sell them. She built a coop designed for grow-out, rather than for egg-laying. This enterprise was profitable, so she expanded operations. She doubled production the next year, and by 1926 she had 10,000 chickens. Her neighbors saw her success, and also went into the broiler biz. Thus was spawned the modern broiler industry. All this was aided by the general prosperity in the 1920s, together with technical progress in refrigeration and transportation. Her first broiler house is now on the U.S. Registry of Historic Places.

Source Chicken Pioneer Celia Steele

However, chickens themselves were still scrawny by today’s standards. As of 1948, chicken meat was still an expensive luxury. With the broiler (meat chicken) market established, breeders naturally tried to develop strains that would grow big and fast. That not only allows more meat to be grown in a given flock, but fast growth means less feed is consumed to get to market weight.

For several years around 1950, A&P Supermarkets sponsored a “Chicken of Tomorrow” program, overseen by the USDA, to promote improved broiler breeding. As examples of chickendom as of 1948, here are plucked carcasses of contestants for the Chicken of Tomorrow contest of that year. Note how stringy they are, compared to the plump, meaty bird you buy at the grocery store today:

Judges evaluating 1948 Chicken of Tomorrow entries at the University of Delaware Agricultural Experiment Station. Photo courtesy the National Archives.

Without going into much detail, the ultimate product was a cross (hybrid) between the Cornish chicken and other breeds. Cornish cross chickens were initially bred for size and growth rate. By say the 1990s, that led to birds that were so heavy that they sometimes could not support their own weight. More recent breeding programs promote leg strength and other health factors, as well as sheer growth.

Example of modern Cornish cross broiler

To produce today’s optimized broiler is a complex process. Breeders must maintain something like four purebred strains, and then carefully cross-breed them, and then cross-breed some more, to get the final hybrid chick to send out for farmers to raise. Only these hybrids have the optimized characteristics; you can’t just take a bunch of these crossed chickens and breed a good flock from them:

Multiplication from pure lines to commercial crossbreeds in broiler breeding

Only a few large outfits can afford to do this, so most hatcheries are supplied by a handful of big breeders. However, there seems to be enough competition to keep the prices down for the consumer. Some folks will always find something to complain about (reduced genetic diversity or hardiness, etc.), but they are welcome to breed and grow less efficient chickens, if it pleases them.

In terms of dollars: “The inflation-adjusted cost of producing a pound of live chicken dropped from US$2.32 in 1934 to US$1.08 in 1960. In 2004, the per-pound cost had dropped to 45 cents, according to the USDA Poultry Yearbook (2006).”

According to the National Chicken Council, in 1925 it took a broiler chicken an average of 112 days to reach a market weight of 2.5 pounds. As of 2024, the market weight has soared to 6.5 pounds, and chickens reach that weight much faster, in 47 days (about the time it takes leafy green vegetables). The net result is that now it only takes about 1.7 pounds of feed to grow one pound of chicken, compared to 4.7 lb/lb in 1925. This nearly three-fold reduction in resource consumption translates into lower consumer costs, lower load on the environment and agricultural resources, and even lower CO2 generation. The largest jump feed conversion efficiency (from 4 to 2.5 lb/lb) occurred between 1945 and 1960, thanks to the development of the Cornish cross.

Have you heard the hubbub about eggs? People say that they’re expensive. My wife told me that if she’s going to pay an arm and a leg, then she may as well get the organic, pasture raised eggs. Absolutely. That’s what the substitution effect predicts. As the price ratio of low-quality to high-quality eggs rises, we’re incentivized to consume more of the high-quality version. It has to do with opportunity costs.

Consider a world in which the low-quality eggs cost $2 and the high-quality eggs cost $6 per dozen. Every high-quality egg costs 3 low-quality eggs. You might still choose the high-quality option, but you know that you’re giving up a lot by doing so. Consider the current world where low-quality eggs are priced on par with high-quality eggs. Now, the opportunity cost of consuming the fancy, pasture-raised eggs has fallen. When consuming one high-quality egg costs you one low-quality egg, it’s much easier to opt for the high-quality version. You’re not giving up as much when you purchase it.

For vegetarians, the recent price swing has probably been rough. Not eating meat, they’re facing the price squeeze more so than their omnivorous counterparts. Through the magic of math, median wages, and average retail prices, the figure below charts the affordability of eggs and dairy products.* The median person has been facing falling egg affordability for two decades. Indeed, it’s only been the past few years, punctuated by the Covid crisis, that consumers experienced more affordable eggs.

Dairy products, however, have become much more affordable. The median American can now afford 50% more of their namesake cheese. Further, we can afford 20-25% more whole milk and cheddar cheese. So, the vegetarians are not so poorly off after all.

But how do meatier sources of protein compare?

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