Someone saw a fox at his hen house door and said, You won't find any hens there. We've gone out of the hen business. There's no living in hens. Look a here, stranger, said the fox, what you say may be true but do you know it is a damn dangerous doctrine you're spreading. If everybody came to believe that I don't know what should become of foxes. And foxes aren't the only ones said the stranger. 'No theres hawks too.' And the people that sell poultry appliances said the stranger with the bitterness of experience.

-- Robert Frost, personal notebook circa 1903, p. 14, verso (Quoted in Faggen, R. (ed.) The Notebooks of Robert Frost (2006), page 26)

This exhibit includes materials about raising chickens as a money-making business more than a hobby. Topics covered include: the nature and dynamics of poultry and egg production, poultry marketing, chicken meat sold at the retail level, poultry and food safety, and the use of chicken and eggs in the home kitchen.

The final sections include articles describing current USDA research on various aspects of this industry and links to the research units studying this area of poultry production.

(Click any image in this exhibit to get more information, including access to full text)