When I was growing up in Maysville, Oklahoma, everyone that lived in town, as well as a lot that lived outside of town, had to go to the post office to pick up their mail. I remember every sprig the post office in Maysville sounded, and smelled, like a chicken pen. Almost every day for a few weeks every year, the back of the post office was filled with cardboard boxes full of air holes and all of them making a peeping noise.
Most all the farmers, and even some that didn’t live on farms, always ordered baby chicks in the spring — to be raised for food and eggs.
Because I was curious, I checked — and the U.S. Postal Service will still ship live chickens. The USPS has been doing this since 1918.
I remember my grandparents always got chickens in the mail every spring. I realize I was just a kid, but I think they all arrived alive. If I remember, each box usually had around 50 baby chicks in it. Apparently newly hatched chicks don’t need food or water for two to three days after coming out of their shells. Just before they leave the shell, chicks absorb the yolk left inside it, which provides all the nutrients they need for their first days of life. It’s been said that “God designed them that way so we can mail them.”
I know — you’re wondering when my extensive research skills will kick in on this. Here’s a couple of interesting things I uncovered.
Commercial incubators became popular in the mid-1800s, but it wasn’t until 1892 that Joseph Wilson of Pine Tree Hatchery, in Stockton, New Jersey, shipped the first order of newly-hatched chicks to a man named Runyun in nearby East Orange, N.J. — via railway express.
By 1915, there were 200 commercial hatcheries in the U.S. In that same year, a group of commercial hatchery men formed the International Baby Chick Association and, as one of their first acts, lobbied the USPS to start shipping poultry through its new parcel post service. They thought it would be faster, safer, and more economical than the multiple express services they had been using.
Even in these modern times, chick shipping hasn’t changed much in the last 100 years. The chicks still have to get to their final destination within 72 hours, and they’r still mostly shipped in cardboard boxes — and most shipments take place in the spring and early summer. A lot of small farms whose eggs and chickens you find at the local farmers’ markets probably got their chicks from mail-order hatcheries.
One last bit of interesting data I found was that initially hatcheries used to file claims with the post office when chicks died in transit, because of a delay. That’s no longer the case, however — very few, if any hatcheries file a claim with the post office. The hatcheries don’t want to give the USPS a reason to come back and say, “We don’t want to do this anymore.”
So I was glad to discover, that one of my childhood memories is still alive today. I’m gong to be sure to check the Shepherdstown post office in the spring.
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