Mr. Cyril Thornber
1921 – 1991
Over a century ago in the little-known West Yorkshire village of Mytholmroyd, a weaver’s strike set in motion a series of events that would have a lasting impact on the modern poultry industry.
One of those weavers, 19-year-old Edgar Thornber, took the strike as a sign that it wasn’t the profession for him, and instead turned to his hobby – chickens.
From there, in 1907, Thornber Bros Ltd was born, and would go on to become one of the most renowned global names in hatching in its heyday of the 1960s, driven by Edgar’s son Cyril Thornber, who made a huge and lasting impact on the poultry industry.
Cyril joined the business in 1937 and, when Edgar died in 1944, and aged just 23, he took over a company that had achieved a turnover of £200,000 and had built a real reputation in the region.
Cyril had a true passion for poultry breeding, and was constantly tinkering and looking for the next best chicken – a fact that gained attention from clients all over the world.
The business broke ground in a variety of ways, producing hybrid strains of layers from Rhode Island Red males and Light Sussex females. Growing to 1,400 staff and sending up to 2,000 consignments of day-old-chicks per day at its peak, it became the biggest business of its type in Europe, hiring PhDs, professors and geneticists to keep it at the cutting edge.
The Thornbers pioneered putting hens into battery cages and people came from far and wide to West Yorkshire to visit the company and learn its techniques. That led to them picking up business all over the world.
The modern industry would appreciate how the Thornbers led the way in trialling new technology.
“We bought an Elliott 803 computer and there’s pictures of my dad signing a cheque for £64,000 for it in 1961,” Cyril’s son Ralph told Poultry Business magazine in January 2024. “The first week it said we had no stock and sent chickens to the wrong end of the country. Everybody thought my dad was crackers, but it took so much of the office work out of the job once they got it established.”
Today, that same computer is on display at The National Museum of Computing at Bletchley Park, the famous home of the World War II codebreakers.
But it wasn’t just about buying in other people’s technology – Cyril himself was innovating in a way that would leave a lasting impact on the industry for decades to come. The company opened a veterinary research laboratory, the first of its type in the UK, researching everything from production techniques to lighting programmes.
A people person, Cyril developed strong friendships with some of the biggest players in the game. He became friends with Henry Wallace, who founded the Hy-Line genetics business, while he had such a good relationship with Bernard Matthews that Cyril would pass turkey enquiries from around the world on to Matthews, and he would reciprocate for chicken.
Among Cyril’s modest indulgences were a bathroom adjoining his office and a car with the number plate CT 404 – the 404 being the name of one of his early hybrid layers. Cyril passed away in 1991, after which the family decided to give up poultry altogether, Ralph instead focusing on converting the empty property into offices and industrial units.