Cecile Long Steele

Cecile Long Steele (1900–1940) was an American chicken farmer from Ocean View, Delaware, considered to be the pioneer of the broiler chicken industry in the United States. She was the first person in Delaware to raise chickens specifically for meat production, separately from her laying flock that was primarily meant to produce eggs.

Career Cecile Steele was the first person in Delaware to raise chickens specifically for meat production, known as broilers. Before the 1920s, chickens were generally raised for egg production on small family farms to be consumed by the family or for sale to bring in additional income; meat was only a by-product of this industry when hens became non-productive or cockerels were slaughtered during the spring. As a result, chicken meat was an expensive rarity.

Steele's role as a pioneer arose because of a shipping error by a Dagsboro hatchery in 1923, which meant that 500 chickens were delivered to her after she had ordered just 50 to replenish her flock. Steele kept and raised the 450 additional chickens, housing them in a small barn heated by a coal oven. Her husband drove upstate via the newly built DuPont Highway to sell the 387 surviving birds (each of which weighed around two pounds) in a city market, getting 62 cents a pound. ).

Using the profits from the initial experiment, Cecile Steele doubled her production to 1000 chickens in 1924. Other farmers in Sussex County began to convert their laying houses to broiler houses after seeing the success enjoyed by the Steeles. By 1935, the Steeles owned seven farms and were raising 35,000 broiler chickens per year.