For nearly 90 years, a Missouri family has been providing quality poultry for showing, meat, enjoyment, eggs and pets.
Cackle Hatchery in Lebanon is a fourth-generation, family-owned and -operated hatchery.
In 1936, Clifford Smith and his wife, Lena, founded Cackle, naming it after the cheerful sound of a hen’s cackle. By the following year, they had expanded to three locations in Lebanon, Dixon and Buffalo.
But hard economic times soon followed. According to Cackle’s current CEO Jeff Smith, Clifford wasn’t ready to give up on the business.
“My dad (Clifton) had moved away, and my grandad called him and said, ‘I know you want to get back in the business. Do you want to move back to Lebanon? I’ve got a couple of ideas that could keep the hatchery going and keep it viable.’”
The Smiths decided to branch into specialty breeds and hobby types of birds, which appealed to customers.Today, Cackle offers over 230 varieties of poultry, shipped directly from its facility.
“Backyard chickens are a high-demand item,” Jeff Smith said. “More people want to learn about livestock and how to raise them, giving them a feeling of self-reliance. Most of our business is through direct retail sales, but we also have a lot of feed stores and farm-and-home chains that buy chicks wholesale from us and sell them directly on their store floors.”
In 1964, Clifton and his wife, Nancy, took over the operation, expanding the business significantly. Today, the hatchery ships over 2.5 million chicks and other baby poultry annually.
“We get between 250,000 and 280,000 eggs every week from our 87 breeding farms,” Smith said. “They’ll be staged in our egg room, and then we dig out all the breeds, separate them and figure out what day they need to be hatched. Once we clear that out, we get them into our 80 incubators and start the process all over again.”
Customers can order online or by phone, choosing their preferred breed and shipping date. Four trucks leave for Kansas City or Memphis, giving the company a 72-hour window to ensure birds arrive safely across the country.
“We spend 24 hours in the shipping process,” Smith said.
In 2023, the fourth generation joined the business, as Jeff’s son, Nathaniel, became chief operations officer.
“We’re very proud to have been able to expand and keep our operations where it all began, on Commercial Street here in downtown Lebanon,” Smith said. “That’s uncommon for a business like ours. I’ve had many people, when they contact us, think they’re going out to a farm, and they are really surprised that we’re in the middle of a small town.”
Cackle is one of only 12 remaining hobby hatcheries in the United States, employing as many as 120 people during its busiest season of March through September.
The hatchery has also drawn media attention over the years.
“We’ve had several TV crews come down and do stories about our operation – Larry the Cable Guy was one of the more famous visitors,” Smith said. “We also host the annual Cackle Hatchery Fall Festival every October, and that’s a great opportunity to show the public the poultry process and what people use our birds for. We also have events like an egg magic show and a hardboiled egg eating contest, which are becoming very popular.”
Innovation has also fueled the hatchery’s longevity. By developing proprietary software that streamlines the poultry hatching process, Cackle has continued to thrive.“For me, I look at this as my mission field,” Smith said. “I’ve gotten this opportunity to run a small business and impact a lot of employees over the years. We have customers from across the United States who are loyal to us – some who have bought birds from us for decades. They have all these funny stories about their birds that they send in letters or e-mails to me. It’s interesting that we’ve been able to impact
