The Brief History of Poultry Breeding Companies
A. C. Lawton and Sons
Mr Norman Lawton in a pen of Silver Plymouth Rocks (reproduced with permission of Norman Lawton) A. C. Lawton & Sons (Production Bred Baby Chicks) was a small breeding company based in Foxboro, Massachusetts that finished operating about 1990. It was latterly run...
Attleborough Poultry Farms
Henry Abbot moved with his parents Robert and Agnes Abbot and two brothers Dick and Tom and sister Agnes, from their home farm, Abbots Hall in Kirkby Lonsdale, Westmoreland in 1882 to Norfolk. They had purchased the Rookery Farm in Thuxton. In Kirkby Lonsdale Henry...
Hollywood Poultry Farm
Mr Mort. E. Atkinson purchased land at Hollywood Farm on Sept 1st 1913 with 800 good quality, American-bred S.C. White Leghorns and 300 Orpingtons. The farm was called Hollywood Hill because of the Holly trees planted by Mr C.D. Stimson. Mr Stimson was a wealthy...
Arbor Acres Farm Inc
The HQ building of Arbor Acres Farm Arbor Acres Farms Inc was started in 1917 near Glastonbury, Connecticut by Frank Saglio and his brothers, John and Charles. At the beginning it was a fruit and vegetable farm and the first chicken house was built from a discarded...
The History of A.A. Tegel Pty. Ltd.
Administrative centre near Camden, N.S.W. opened in 1971 adjacent to the nucleus breeding complex. A.A. Tegel Pty. Ltd. began as J.E. Tegel and Sons (Eric, Albert and Norman) in 1920 with the purchase of 20 acres of land in Heath Road, Leppington, N.S.W. A mixed farm,...
Famous Women in the Poultry Industry
The boat canal at Ocean View The official beginning of the broiler industry is officially credited to Mrs Cecile Steele of Ocean View, Delaware. Ocean View is a small village on the southern side of Indian River Bay, and was the location where George Ellis began his...
ScanBrid International A/S
Heidi Larsen (farm manager), Ejner Boersting (breeding manger and geneticist) and Kristen Sorensen (trainee manager and geneticist) of ScanBrid Int. A.S. ScanBrid International A/S was set up in Denmark by the Turkish company KOY-TUR Holding A.S. and the Norwegian...
Reginald C Punnett
The picture above shows Reginald Punnett (left) with his professor and then colleague William Bateson. As their experiments progressed, they soon realized the vast body of research that lay before them and the rest of the scientific community. They started the first...
Peele’s Norfolk Black Turkeys
The Rookery Farm, Thuxton The Rookery Farm, located near Thuxton, Norfolk, England was purchased in 1932 by Frank Peele, formerly owned by Henry Abbot. He was the son of Earnest E. Peele who with his brother George J. established the business in 1880 with a...
Nicholas Turkey Breeding Farms Inc
George Nicholas and his wife Eileen “Johnnie” Nicholas started a turkey farm at Two Rock about 10 miles West of Petaluma, California, a few months after their marriage in 1938. The property was found to be disease-ridden and not suitable for turkeys. Petaluma was once...
Mt Hope Farm
The geneticists of Mt Hope Farm, Dr Edward F. Godfrey (mid-left) and Dr Hubert Goodale (mid-right) Mt Hope Farm was the creation of a former Chicago lawyer Col. Ezra Parmalee Prentice. He was born in Davenport, Iowa. He graduated with a B.A. (Law) in 1886 from Amherst...
Lohmann Tierzucht GmbH
Lohmann Tierzucht is in the Lohmann-Wesjohann Group, a conglomerate of more than thirty companies in complementary operations and products encompassing breeding, layer pullet multiplication and egg production, animal nutrition, livestock feeds and concentrates,...
The Khaki Campbell Duck
Adele Campbell is an unlikely Legend because her achievement has been recognized long after her death. The Khaki Campbell was a prolific egg producer and became the benchmark on which all other egg laying ducks were compared, quite often in side by side trials more...
J.J. Warren Inc
The founder, James J. Warren, was born on October 10th, 1892 in Batavia, New York. His family ultimately moved to North Brookfield, Massachusetts from Batavia, New York and established a small dairy farm there. James Warren went to college at what was then...
Hypeco-CPI-Bovans
As the name Hypeco-CPI-Bovans indicates the company was an amalgamation of three groups who began commercial breeding in the 1950’s and had origins in the Dutch and Belgium farming cooperatives. In 1951 five Dutch poultry specialists visited the U.S. to study the...
Hyline International
“There would be no Hy-Line chickens today if it were not for hybrid corn”, said Henry B. Wallace Jr. M.S.A. in London on 13th May, 1949 at a Special Poultry Breeding Conference Chaired by Dr Rupert Coles. Just over two years earlier his father Mr Henry A Wallace Sen....
Hubbard Farms Inc
The Hubbard homestead in 2000 Hubbard Farms Inc can trace its origins back to 1791 when Levi Hubbard settled in Walpole and built a homestead on Old Drewsville Road. In the early 1900’s his great-grandson Ira ran a general produce farm, Maple Hill Farm, there with the...
H and N Inc
Dr Art Heisdorf began poultry farming in 1926 when he purchased 23 White Wyandotte chicks. He was employed as a geneticist in the Kimber organisation which operated only in California within the US. He started his own layer breeding company with his wife Mary on a 15...
F and G Sykes Ltd
Frank and Geoffrey Sykes were large scale Wiltshire farmers who started a free range laying unit at Tytherington during the war. A manager, Tom Curtis, was brought in to manage it and small sales were made to local farmers. A breeding program was started in 1947 using...
Eskildsen Goose Breeders
The Eskildsen breeding centre in Koningswartha, Saxony, Germany The Eskildsen goose breeding and production company is a family business started up in Northern Germany region called Dithmarschen. It is on the western coast of the Jutland Peninsula from the Eider River...
Fairbairn Holdings Ltd
A visit by a Lohmann Party and Chunky-Fairbairn executives to the Fairbairn Chicpak factory in CarlisleFront: Mr G. B. Fairbairn (son of founder), Dr W. Hartman, Mr J. Nixon-Wiley, Herr H. Lohmann, Herr K. Lohmann, Mr M. Mahaffey. Second row: Herr Figge, Dr H....
Dominant CZ
The office of Dominant CZ within the hatchery and office of Lihen Studenec Ltd near Studenec The history of Dominant CZ is quite short in relation to many other companies with a similar company product trading objectives. However, three things stand out as significant...
Cobb-Vantress Inc
The Old Pickard Farm, Littleton, Mass In 1916 Robert C Cobb after finishing one year at the Harvard Business School decided to go into farming rather than start a career in business. He borrowed money from his father and purchased the Old Pickard Farm in Littleton 25...
Chunky Chicks (Nichols) Ltd
The hatchery and headquarters of Chunky Chicks Ltd and later that of Ross Breeders Ltd Abridged and edited from the story of “Fenton Barns and associate farms” by Rupert Chalmers-Watson 1923-1973. “In 1948 Rupert Chalmers-Watson attended the World Poultry Congress in...
Cherry Valley Farms Ltd
From 50g to 3kg in 47 days Our company was founded in 1959 by the late Sir Joseph Nickerson near the village of Rothwell Lincolnshire. The main production and processing plant are nearby at Caistor. For 50 years the company dedicated itself entirely to the genetic...
British United Turkeys Ltd
Warren Hall, Broughton, England, the headquarters in the 1990’s British United Turkeys Ltd (B.U.T.) was incorporated in 1962 and was founded by Rupert Chalmers-Watson whose family had built up a turkey breeding and production business at Fenton Barns in East Lothian,...
The Short History of Babcock Poultry
FounderMunroe Cappel Babcock founded Babcock Poultry Farm in 1935 by when he decided to start his own hatchery. It was located in a former shop in Ithaca, New York. Munroe Babcock was born in 1907 in Fredonia, New York near the shores of Lake Erie. His father had a...
Avian Farms International
Robert H. Saglio breed lobsters adopting techniques similar to that used in chickens by his father Henry Saglio the founder of Arbor Acres. High prices for energy forced this operation to close. He then started growing turkeys on Greyledge Farms and then capons. In...
Sterling Poultry Products Ltd
Sterling Poultry Products was one of five (Sterling, Chunky Chicks (Nichols), Spinks, Sykes and Fairbairn) breeding organisations that eventually contributed to the group that comprised Ross Poultry Ltd and later Ross Breeders. The company was founded by Mr G.G....
Cobb Vantress
In 1916 Robert C Cobb after finishing one year at the Harvard Business School decided to go into farming rather than start a career in business. He borrowed money from his father and purchased the Old Pickard Farm in Littleton 25 miles west of Boston. It comprised 167...
Steggles Pty Ltd
The Beresfield, NSW site with feed mill, hatchery, growing houses and processing plant.Steggles Pty Limited began in the 1920’s in Newcastle NSW as a produce and stock feed operation run by three brothers Jack, Stan and George. Bruce Steggles, the son of Jack, took...
Ross Breeders Ltd
Ross Breeders Ltd was the outcome of a series of mergers and takeovers in British poultry production. The name was inherited from the Ross family in Grimsby. It was developed gradually in Grimsby from 1920 when Thomas Ross started a small fish merchandizing company....
Peterson Industries
Benjamin Peterson was a pioneer who in 1890, with his wife and son George Elmer, drove a wagon from Decatur, Illinois and acquired 160 acres of land in the north-western uplands of Arkansas near the town of Decatur. George and his brother Cal married the Beal sisters....
Perdue Farms Inc
Arthur Perdue started a poultry business when the railway company he worked for, Adams Express Co., wanted to transfer him to Pennsylvania from Salisbury, Maryland. In the Express Office as an Agent he observed thousands of eggs being shipped to northern cities. He...
Parks’ Poultry Farm
The Parks’ Poultry Farm was located in Altoona, Pennsylvania and made its reputation breeding Barred Plymouth Rock. The farm was owned and managed by the three generation of the Parks family: the founder Joe R. Parks, his son Joe W. Parks and his Robert (Bob) Parks....
Nichols Poultry Farm Inc
Nichols Poultry Farm was established in Kingston, New Hampshire in 1915 by Perrin Nichols and his son Frederic Nichols. The farm was to become one of the first commercial broiler growing farms in the U.S.A. They produced “springers” (as broilers were then known) for...