"The Quality Chicken People ®" is much more than our company slogan.   It also is our company philosophy, as we have grown from a small, family-owned hatchery near Seaford, Delaware, to an industry leader and a global exporter of premium poultry products.

Today, Allen's operations are sophisticated and complex, from breeding/hatching, feed mill and growout operations to advanced processing plants and our quality assurance laboratory.   We operate in three states, transport our products throughout North America, and have export customers around the world.

The poultry business is as demanding as it is gratifying, and at every phase we remain as dedicated to quality and customer satisfaction as we did in our earliest days.


THEN...
Allen's Hatchery was founded in 1919 by Charles C. (Clarence) and Nellie G. Allen, who began by incubating about 6,000 chicks per week and hatching them using a coal-oil-fired incubator.   They sold the chicks to local farmers for egg production.

Clarence and Nellie relocated their family and their business to Seaford, Delaware, in 1935, primarily to gain access to electricity.   As the business has grown, so has the family's commitment to ownership, as succeeding generations of Allens have moved into management positions.

 		 Since the 1970s we have focused on building a fully integrated company to manage and control every aspect of poultry production.   We acquired our first processing plant in 1971 and first milling operation in 1981.   In 1986 we opened a fleet distribution and maintenance center at our Cordova facility, setting the stage for future growth.

With our production capacity approaching two million pounds per week in the late '80s, and with an eye on the global economy, Allen's began an export program in 1989.

...AND NOW
Headquartered at the site of the Allen homestead in Seaford, we now employ over 3,000 people at several locations in Delaware, Maryland and North Carolina.   Currently we are processing about 2.5 million birds per week and packing about 10 million pounds of finished products per week.   This equates to more than 500 million pounds of poultry products per year. In 1996 export operations reached a peak of about 100 million pounds of products per year.

Along with breeding and hatchery facilities, feed mills and processing plants, our operations include a farming division that produces feed grains, 28 company-owned growout farms and coordination of more than 500 independent growout farms.   Our operations are fully integrated to assure uniform quality of every poultry product we bring to market.

Allen's headquarters in Seaford, was the site of the family homestead in the mid-1930s.