John W Tyson

Biography

Tyson was born in Mound City, Missouri, the son of Isaac F. Tyson and his wife Anna, née Skelly. Tyson's career in the poultry market began when he heard that chickens were bringing in higher prices in the northern parts of the United States than in his home of Arkansas. Investing his savings and borrowing more, he drove 500 chickens from his state to Chicago, Illinois, earning enough profit from the trip to fund another. When that proved successful, he began increasing his independence, adding incubators to his enterprise so that he could raise his own chicks and milling his own chicken feed.

In the 1940s, Tyson purchased a broiler farm in Springdale, Arkansas and began cross-breeding the high-meat yield New Hampshire Red Christy chickens with other birds, a practice that was not then standard in the industry but which proved successful for Tyson. In 1947, he incorporated Tyson Feed and Hatchery, which was active in three phases of chicken farming: supplying chicks to farmers, selling feed to farmers, and transporting chickens to market. By 1952, the year Tyson's son Don Tyson dropped out of college to join the company as general manager, Tyson Feed and Hatchery was well established, but the field was competitive and the market was troubled. Tyson and his son considered accepting a buy-out offer from Swanson, but decided to persist instead, and by the end of the decade had built the company's first processing plant in Springdale at a cost of $90,000, $15,000 above estimates. Through 1961, Tyson and his son set about increasing revenues, entering the commercial egg business in 1961 and going public, under the new name Tyson's Foods, in 1963.

John W. Tyson died in a train accident near Springdale in 1967 and was succeeded as CEO by his son.