Elmbank Hatchery – 1950 Sunday Independent

This lovely little advertisement for Elmbank Hatchery in Cavan may be easy to overlook, but through it we get an interesting insight into changes in Irish agricultural industries in the mid-twentieth century, as well as a family-run business. Elmbank Hatchery was started in 1945 by Tommy McCormick and quickly became one of the largest producers of chicks in the area. In a 1947 Seanad Éireann debate over the Poultry Hatcheries Bill, the then Minister of Agriculture, Mr. Smith, pointed out that ‘in recent years the older system of hatching eggs on the farm, either by natural means or in incubators, [was] tending to be replaced by the distribution of day-old chicks from large-scale commercial hatcheries’. Elmbank was one of these new hatcheries. In 1950, they dispatched 250,000 day-old chicks from the hatchery in Cavan, supplying poultry producers all over Ireland. Throughout the 1950s, they solidified their place in the hatchery market by fielding visits from agricultural students from the US, establishing nationwide distribution networks, and promoting the new technology used in their plants via radio interviews.

In her account of life on a family farm in Aughrim, Co. Galway, Louisa Campell writes about rearing turkeys which her family acquired as day-old chicks from Elmbank. Louisa describes how, as a child, she would harvest nettle used to feed the chicks. Using an old sock to cover her hand so as not to get hurt by the stinging nettle, she would cut the plant, boil it down, and mix it with oatmeal. The chicks were raised on this mix. Louisa recounts going to collect the chicks from the bus:

They were produced by Elmbank hatchery and delivered as day-old chicks. They were sent down the country by passenger bus in square cardboard boxes with holes for ventilation. They never stopped screeching because they were hungry and cold. I don’t know why the passengers didn’t object. I would pick them up at the local bus stop and bring them home on the carrier of the bicycle. I used to feel so sorry for them – little tiny balls of yellow fluff. They were then put into a box with an infrared lamp – we had rural electrification by then.

This account of a small family farm demonstrates the role Elmbank played in supplying local farms, big or small, with birds to raise.

Tommy McCormick’s son, Frank McCormick, went on to get a Diploma in Poultry Husbandry in 1976 at the age of 25 and was the only person in Ireland at the time to hold that degree. By that point, he was also managing Elmbank, keeping the business in the family. Unfortunately, the hatchery wouldn’t be running for too much longer as in 1992 the hatchery was forced to close its doors due to an update in EU regulations. Frank didn’t let the hatchery go without a fight, suing the Department of Agriculture for losses after he argued they hadn’t given him the opportunity to bring the hatchery up to the new standards. After the closing of the hatchery, the building became abandoned, and in October of 2000 the building was destroyed in a fire, putting a final end to the family business.

By Mazie Smallidge, researched and written for #OpentheArchive, June 2025.