Fig. 42. Long-Tailed Japanese Phœnix cockerel. (Photograph from Urban Farms, Buffalo, New York)
The "hen-fever" period. We are all familiar with the phrase "the hen fever" and with its application to persons intensely interested in poultry, but few know how it originated. The interest in better poultry that had been slowly growing in the Eastern states culminated in 1849 in an exhibition in the Public Garden in Boston, to which fanciers from eastern Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and eastern Connecticut brought their choicest and rarest specimens. This was the first poultry show held in America. Nearly fifteen hundred birds were exhibited, and the exhibitors numbered over two hundred. There were a few birds of other kinds, but fowls made by far the greater part of the show. All the principal races of Europe and Asia were represented. Most of the exhibitors lived in the immediate vicinity of Boston. About ten thousand people attended this exhibition.
Such an event created a great sensation. Newspaper reports of it reached all parts of the country. The Chinese fowls, so large when compared with others, were most noticed. At once a great demand for these fowls and for their eggs arose, and prices for fancy poultry, which previously had been but little higher than prices for common poultry, rose so high that those who paid such prices for fowls were commonly regarded as monomaniacs. While the interest was not as great in other kinds of fowls as in the Shanghais, Cochin Chinas, and "Brahmaputras," as they were then called, all shared in the boom, and within a few years there was hardly a community in the northeastern part of the United States where there was not some one keeping highly bred fowls. When the interest became general, the famous showman, P. T. Barnum, promoted a show of poultry in the American Museum in New York City. Many celebrated men became interested in fine poultry. Daniel Webster had been one of the exhibitors at the first show in 1849. The noted temperance lecturer, John B. Gough, was a very enthusiastic fancier.
After a few years the excitement began to subside, and most people supposed that it was about to die, never to revive. A Mr. Burnham, who had been one of the most energetic promoters of Asiatic fowls, and had made a small fortune while the boom lasted, had so little confidence in the permanence of the poultry fancy that he published a book called "The History of the Hen Fever," which presented the whole movement as a humbug skillfully engineered by himself. This book was very widely read, and the phrase "the hen fever," applying to enthusiastic amateur poultry keepers, came into common use.
Subsequent developments showed that those who had supposed that the interest in fine poultry was only a passing fad were wrong. The true reason for its decline at that time was that the nation was approaching a crisis in its history and a civil war. When the war was over, the interest in poultry revived at once, and has steadily increased ever since. The prices for fine specimens, which were considered absurd in the days of the hen fever, are now ordinary prices for stock of high quality.
Fig. 43. Barred Plymouth Rock cock. (Photograph from Bureau of Animal Industry, United States Department of Agriculture)
How the American breeds arose. It is natural to suppose that with such a variety of types of fowls, from so many lands, there was no occasion for Americans to make any new breeds. If, however, you look critically at the foreign breeds, you may notice that not one of them had been developed with reference to the simple requirements of the ordinary farmer and poultry keeper. It was the increasing demand for eggs and poultry for market that had given the first impulse to the interest in special breeds. The first claim made for each of these was that it was a better layer than the ordinary fowl. In general, these claims were true, but farmers and others who were interested primarily in producing eggs and poultry for the table were rather indifferent to the foreign breeds, because, among them all, there was not one as well adapted to the ordinary American poultry keeper's needs as the old Dominique or as the occasional flocks of the old native stock that had been bred with some attention to size and to uniformity in other characters.