Private company
Gold Kist
Chicken producing company
Gold Kist was a large chicken producing company in the southern United States. It was founded in 1933 by D.W. Brooks, a University of Georgia agronomy instructor as the Cotton Producers Association, a cooperative to help farmers in Carrollton, Georgia, market cotton. It soon grew and diversified into fields such as fertilizer and retailing farm supplies.2 Wikipedia text CC BY-SA 4.0
Last updated Oct 21, 2026.
Overview
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Gold Kist was a large chicken producing company in the southern United States. It was founded in 1933 by D.W. Brooks, a University of Georgia agronomy instructor as the Cotton Producers Association, a cooperative to help farmers in Carrollton, Georgia, market cotton. It soon grew and diversified into fields such as fertilizer and retailing farm supplies. It soon entered the poultry business. In 1998 it exited the agronomy business to focus on protein products, primarily chicken but also pork. In 2004, with the approval of its membership, it converted from being a cooperative to a for-profit stock-ownership company, listed on NASDAQ. In 2006, Gold Kist was acquired by Pilgrim's Pride.2
Products and brands
Operations
Gold Kist operated nine fully integrated poultry divisions in Alabama, Georgia, Florida and North and South Carolina. Each division operated its own hatchery, feed mill, and processing plant.
Co-op
Gold Kist contracted with approximately 2,300 family farmers to raise the chickens. The farmers would provide the houses, equipment, utilities and labor to grow the birds. Gold Kist provided the chicks, feed and technical assistance. When the chickens reached market weight, Gold Kist would process and market them. This contractual arrangement gave farmers access to global markets but reduced their exposure to market volatility.
Operations
The company's pullet farms are where select breeds are raised to about 20
Operations
On a Gold Kist layer farm pullets were grown for a few weeks along with roosters (about 1 rooster for every 8-10 hens) where they begin to mate and eventually lay eggs. The eggs that leave a Gold Kist layer farm (usually twice per week) were taken to the local division's hatchery. The birds were kept here for no more than 10 months.
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Operations
The layer hens' hatched chicks were taken to a Gold Kist broiler farm where they were grown from the day they hatch (usually just hours after hatching) for about 6 to 8 weeks.
From Wikipedia’s article on Gold Kist, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.3
Timeline
- 1933Founded Founded1
Links
Sources
The numbers on this page point here. Each one links to the record it came from.
- 1WikidataGold Kist on Wikidata
- 2WikipediaGold Kist on Wikipedia
- 3
- 4Wikimedia CommonsGold Kist photo by unknown, PD