The company was founded in 1920 by Arthur Perdue with his wife, Pearl Perdue, who had been keeping a small flock of chickens.
The company started out selling eggs, and then in 1925, Perdue built the company’s first hatchery, and began selling layer chicks to farmers instead of only eggs for human consumption.
His son Frank Perdue joined the company in 1939 at age 19 after dropping out of college. In the 1940s, the company made a transition from selling layer chicks to broiler chickens.
