Largest Chicken Hatcheries in The United States?

[Gray Farms]

I'd say Ideal is the largest.

 

[Bullitt]

I'd say Ideal is the largest.

I looked at the website for Ideal Poultry. Wouldn't you know it, the largest retail hatchery is in Texas. I was thinking it was going to be maybe in Ohio or Missouri or something.

It states on the website, "IDEAL is the largest supplier of backyard poultry in the United States, shipping close to 5 million chicks annually."

 

[Bullitt]

I looked at Cackle Hatchery's website. They have some interesting information.

It seems they contract out to Amish people the raising of at least some of their stock.


"Cackle Hatchery® supplies day-old grandparent and parent stock for our own use and to a few USA poultry hatcheries. We breed, raise and provide our own proprietary selected lines of feather sexable chicks within our Feather Sexing Program. We also work on improving sex-link, auto-sexing lines and vent sexing lines. Some of our lines are bred for production type while others are bred to met the American Standard of Perfection. A lot of our rare breeds and bantams are bred from exhibition/show stock. We have about 65,000 poultry in production on about 60 farms here in south central Missouri. We spread our breeders out on numerous farms to decrease our exposure to loss due to possible disease outbreak. Most of our flocks are placed on Amish farms and eggs are brought into our 30,000 square feet hatchery (Lebanon location) every Thursday. Since 1936 we have focused on selective breeding to produce disease resistant and productive poultry for the backyard or farm use. Cackle's brand has established a long history of continous improvements in producing strong and healthy baby chicks."