The whithing farms story

BACKSTORY

From the mid 1960’s until 1989 Henry Hoffman of Warrenton, Oregon
devoted his life to producing the best dry fly hackle in the world. His
primary motivation was an all-consuming, life-long love of fishing. As
an offshoot to this intense interest in fishing Henry also learned to
tie flies, often by taking apart lost flies he found on the stream bank.

Fortunately (for himself and the world) Henry was born into the right
situation. His parents had a small meat chicken breeding operation in
California, so Henry grew up learning the basics of poultry husbandry
and breeder selection. After a stint in the military Henry settled in
Oregon and made his living tying fishing flies commercially,
predominantly “dry flies” which are flies that float on top of the water
imitating an insect to attract wary fish.

In the 1960’s good quality feathers for tying dry flies were nearly
impossible to come by, and tiers had to rely on rather poor quality
capes imported from India or China – basically just pelted village
chickens. A “cape” is a pelt with feathers from the rooster’s head and
neck; a “saddle” is from its back. In addition, the black and white
barred pattern feathers called grizzly did not exist in these village
chickens, thus major fly patterns which required grizzly hackle garnered
a premium price. Therefore Henry set out in the mid 1960’s to find
himself some grizzly chickens to raise for his own tying needs and
potentially to develop into a marketable genetic hackle line. He
searched amongst the county fairs and poultry fanciers in the Pacific
Northwest and finally found an exceptional trio of Barred Plymouth Rock
bantams, which incredibly had excellent (for that time) dry fly capes
and also a respectable dry fly saddle. By Henry’s own estimation these
initial birds saved him 10 years of development time, and he was off and
running.

Because Henry Hoffman was a commercial fly tier, using the hackle in his
own work, he brought an end-user’s perspective to his breeder
selection. Literally he’d tie flies with the feathers and the best tying
feathers determined which roosters became the sires for the next
generation. This tying performance criteria put Henry’s breeding program
in a league of its own and earned the Hoffman Hackle rave reviews and a
devout following.

Besides being passionate about fishing and fly tying, having a directly
applicable family upbringing, finding truly exceptional foundation
stock, and directing the stock’s genetic development by personally using
their feathers, Henry did three other particularly fortunate things:
First, he confined his breeding program exclusively to Grizzly for about
the first 15 years, thus focusing on only one color (also the most
important), which greatly accelerated progress. Secondly, Henry
conceived of and meticulously developed the first and unquestionably the
best dry fly saddle hackle, thus bringing to the tying world a major
fly tying innovation. And the final very good aspect of Henry was he
preferred to stay small and focus on quality instead of quantity. The
Hoffman operation only grew to 2,200 roosters a year and was essentially
a mom and pop operation where Henry and his wife Joyce did nearly
everything, with help from other family members, including even Henry’s
elderly mother and father.

By the 1980’s the Hoffman Grizzly was world famous, almost legendary,
and very coveted. Their dry fly saddles had progressed markedly and were
totally unique, having to be seen to be believed, with individual
feathers up to 12 inches long! Henry had also expanded his color range
to include white and brown, the other essentials in fly tying. But Henry
wanted to get out from under the all-consuming work load and drudgery
of his business before he was too old to enjoy an extended retirement of
fishing. So he put his life’s work up for sale. Many were
understandably interested, but few had all the necessary skills to
further develop the potential in the Hoffman gene pool. What was needed
was knowledge and ability in poultry genetics, production and
processing, and an equally serious willingness and commitment to devote
their professional life to this long term endeavor.

WHITING FARMS Inc.

After 5 years or so of trying to sell his business Henry Hoffman
eventually got a workable deal created with Thomas Whiting of Colorado.
Tom was then finishing his Ph.D. at the University of Arkansas, and also
had an M.S. degree from the University of Georgia and a B.S. degree
from Colorado State University, always specializing in his particular
areas of interest – poultry genetics and husbandry. In addition Tom had
considerable industrial poultry experience, i.e., managing a commercial
egg production complex in Colorado that produced 3 million eggs per
week. Henry agreed to consult for 5 years to transfer his knowledge and
to initially preserve continuity in the breeding program. Whiting chose
western Colorado to set up the new venture, and in April 1989 hatched
out his first Hoffman Hackle chicks there from eggs sent to him by Henry
from Oregon. From about 5,000 birds that first year (1989) to over
60,000 birds harvested in 2015, Whiting Farms has risen to become the
largest and dominant fly tying feather producer in the world market.

Wanting to expand the depth and breadth of feather offerings to the fly
tiers of the world, Dr. Whiting spent the 1990s acquiring or creating
new genetic lines of feather chickens.

Most notably, Whiting Farms acquired the next best genetic dry fly
hackle stock in 1995 from Ted Hebert, known as Hebert Hackle, to
complement its gene pool and product line. The Hebert/Miner™ hackle
stock is renowned for their incredible dry fly capes and the widest,
best and most unique array of natural colors of any hackle stock in the
world.

Other fly tying chicken lines were either acquired or started from
scratch. The most significant acquisition was a small importation of
hatching eggs from Spain in the mid-1990s of the oldest known fly tying
chicken, the Coq de Leon. Product lines developed entirely at Whiting
Farms include the American Hackle wet fly product line (started in
1992), the Spey Hackle (1997), and the Brahma gray partridge substitute
line (1996). Giant guinea fowl were also added to expand the feathers
offered. Whiting Farms has grown to become the dominant supplier of fly
tying feathers in terms of quality, value, product range and reputation.
Currently clients in 48 states and 36 countries are supplied.

Whiting Farms has production on 2 ranches in western Colorado with a
central processing, shipping and administrative facility. With continual
genetic progress Whiting Farms has been able to supply ever increasing
quality, value and selection to the fly tiers of the world. To
accommodate an across the board quality improvement in all product
lines, Whiting Farms introduced the Olympic medal grade designations of Gold, Silver and Bronze in the 1999/2000 sales season.
The purpose of this grade designation was to pass on the genetic and
husbandry advances at Whiting Farms to the fly tiers of the world and to
further distinguish Whiting Farms’ quality superiority. Basically the
Whiting Farms Bronze grade is as good as and often better than any
competitor’s top grade. And the Silver, Gold and Platinum grades are
beyond all others. This grade improvement continues to this day.

Genetic hackle production is predominantly in America; there are only
about a dozen producers presently, all but two of which are in the
United States. Nevertheless, Whiting Farms sell their feather products
world-wide. Japan is their largest single foreign market, with Canada,
the European countries, Australia and New Zealand buying considerable
quantities as well. Commercial fly tying factories in Singapore, Sri
Lanka, Thailand, the Philippines, China, Kenya, South Africa, Bhutan and
Brazil are also supplied by Whiting Farms. Newly developing consumer
markets are also expanding in Argentina, Chile, South Africa, South
Korea and the former Soviet Union countries. In all, Whiting Farms sell
their products into 36 countries and 48 states.

In the late 1990s some “commercial” chicken lines began to be
developed by Whiting Farms for the production of blue, green, brown and
white egg shell stocks, as well as gourmet meat and guinea stocks. These
lines have been developed to provide a high production alternative to
industrial chicken stocks, with an emphasis on product quality, bird
beauty and sustainability for backyard and small poultry producers.

Whiting Farms has received several awards
over the years as a result of excellent business standing and
contributions to the fly fishing industry. Click here to peruse a few of
our over the years. We are especially proud to mention that in the
Spring 2011 issue of Fly Tyers Magazine, Tom Whiting was the first
recipient to receive the magazine’s Lifetime Achievement Award in the area of fly tying materials. To quote from the award
article: “When talking with Tom, he always credits the hackle breeders
who preceded him, but there’s no mistaking the fact that he is producing
the highest quality hackle in the history of the craft; it is the
standard by which all other hackle is judged.” In addition to being the
recipient of several awards over the years, Whiting Farms has a very
special award that we give as well. This award is call the Platinum
Feather Award and is given to people who have mentored and helped
Whiting Farms in many aspects. In fact, Whiting Farms would not be the
company it is today without the contributions of our Platinum Feather
Award Recipients. Please take a moment to read about them as they are very special to us.

CURRENT HAPPIENINGS ON THE FARM

In recent years Whiting Farms has undergone some exciting changes. We
were able to decommission an older hatchery facility and build a new
hatchery. The new hatchery is literally state-of-the-art in terms of new
technology, floor plan, ventilation sophistication and even an energy
recovery system. Each of the four incubators are the latest “single
stage” technology where only one age group of eggs are set in each
machine so the exact environment parameters can be maintained throughout
the incubation process, which is about 21 days. Each of the three
incubators and one “hatcher” (where the chicks actually hatch out at day
21) have capacities of 18,700 eggs each. The entire hatchery building
was designed and built for an additional four incubators to accommodate
future expansion, which is planned for late 2015.

In addition to the new hatchery we put into operation seven new barns
to replace older barns. These new barns are also state-of-the-art. Rest
assured the birds are well taken care of. One other new development
that has been cost effective has been the installment and implementation
of a large solar field. This solar field is able to produce enough
power for several barns. Whiting Farms prides itself in being a green
company. This solar field is only one way in which Whiting Farms stays
green.

Whiting Farms celebrated 25 years of genetic hackle production in 2015.
To think it was just over 25 years ago when Tom Whiting hatched his
first batch of Hoffman Hackle eggs. Look how far genetic hackle has come
in that time.

Here is a quote from Dr. Tom’s Newsletter article in our 25th
anniversary edition, “But really there would be no history of Whiting
Farms without the fly tiers who buy our feathers. So I thank you all for
your patronage, suggestions and support. I just still can’t believe it
has been 25 years.”

If you would like to keep up with the latest news from Whiting Farms,
please join our Newsletter list. It comes out about four times a year by
email. If you miss an issue you can always catch up on past issues
online.

The mission of Whiting Farms, Inc., from its inception in 1989, has been
to be THE producer of the highest quality fly tying feathers for the
world. We continue to be committed to this mission.

The text is copied from the official website: https://www.whitingfarms.com/