I had an interesting conversation the other day with a woman who knew all about 'chicken feed dresses.' You can see one pictured on the left (taken from the National Museum of American History). I was amazed that I found someone who had similar experiences with chicken feed bags as myself.


As I was growing up in the small town of Montague, Michigan, we had a chicken coop which housed a couple dozen chickens. Twice a year my dad would pick up a dozen of young chicks and we raised them for meat and eggs. We had an old wood burning stove in our kitchen. That stove not only kept us warm, but it incubated the young chickens. If it was cold outside, mom and dad would put the young chicks in a box, cover them with a blanket, and carry them into our kitchen. There were times when one or two of the little chicks would escape from their supposedly warm and snug home, and my mother would have to find and catch them. I can still hear her saying quietly, “Now come to me. You’re waking the entire family. Now where did you go? Oh, there you are. You get back with your brothers and sisters and go to sleep without a peep.” After she caught them she would cover them up again, and the peeps would come at longer and longer intervals until finally there was complete silence.

It was hard for us to kill the chickens. They had become family pets, and we named them after Hollywood actors and actresses. Betty Grable was the hen with the perfect legs, and Clark Gable was our handsome rooster. Of course, there came the time when Clark was gone from the chicken coop and my brother and I were very concerned. We went into the house to notify mother of his disappearance only to find her at the stove frying up a chicken. We immediately figured out where Clark was. Needless to say, Jim and I sat quite solemn at the dinner table that night and there was some left over chicken.

Dad would have to buy feed for the chickens, and if it was time for a new dress for me I would go down and pick out the material that I liked. Mom would always tell dad how many bags she would need to make me a dress and that he needed to find matching material. You see, the chicken feed bags came in printed, flowered, striped, and plain cotton material. I remember going into the feed store and seeing the bags stacked almost to the ceiling. Dad would ask me to pick out the material I wanted and then would have the salesman move the bags around until I had four bags of the same material. This was an exciting day for me.

Once we had the chicken bags at home, dad would open them up and pour the feed into another box. Then mom would carefully un-seam the bags, wash them, iron them, and begin her creation of a new dress for me. She would even make hair bows for my pigtails with the left over material.

I never remember asking mom to take me to a store to buy me a dress. I knew that times were hard for my mom and dad and I was very satisfied, proud, and happy with my ‘chicken feed dresses.'