Derek Kelly, who restored the traditional bronze-feathered turkey to the Christmas dinner table, died earlier this week at his home in Danbury, Essex, aged 95.
He and his wife Mollie founded Kelly Turkeys in 1971 after his several roles in the early years of the modern poultry industry. Today the company is run by their son Paul.
Although Derek stepped back from leading the company almost 20 years ago, he continued to play a lifelong role in the UK poultry industry.
His work with American chicken and turkey breeders, and then in developing his own business, involved travel around the world and this, combined with a love of cruises in more recent years, took him to 82 countries and to visit more than 100 World Heritage Sites.
By contrast with his career and later life, he was born in the small village of Brancepeth in the heart of the County Durham coalfield. His parents were teachers who were rather dismayed by his early interest in farming and insisted he should study agriculture at university if he wanted to make it a career.
In the fifth and final year of university study he started a Master’s Degree in genetics and was persuaded by a lecturer to focus on poultry rather than his beloved cattle. By then he had had enough of the academic world and began working on the Yorkshire hill farm near Skipton owned by the family of his newly-married wife.
After managing a larger farm in Berkshire he saw an opportunity to pursue his love of genetics with Arbor Acres, one of the leading US poultry breeders seeking to introduce their broiler chickens to the still very traditional poultry industry in this country.
He went to Bernard Matthews as it was starting to mass produce turkeys for the Christmas market, and on to US turkey breeder River Rest. When this company was a victim of a Wall Street crash, he and Mollie started their own business using the hatchery at Springate Farm, Danbury.
In those days the white feathered US turkeys dominated the market and the couple were hatching day-old poults for farmers around the country and producing Christmas turkeys for their own customers.
The UK had joined the Common Market which did not have a designation for the kind of turkeys reared traditionally by farmers – dry plucked, hung for several weeks like game and then processed. Derek campaigned with the National Farmers Union and British Turkey Federation to lobby Westminster and Brussels to have this designation accepted.
He became one of the founders of the Traditional Farm Fresh Turkey Association and of the Anglian Turkey Association which started organising its own Christmas show.
Derek and Mollie had kept a few traditional breeds as a hobby and they began to realise the bronze feathered, slow growing turkeys did have a special flavour distinct from the commercial fast-growing breeds. There were very few bronze feathered turkeys then remaining in the UK and Derek went around the country buying from other farmers who wondered why on earth he would be interested in their birds when the white-feathered turkeys were so widely reared for Christmas.
Derek and Mollie decided to major on the bronze turkeys and promote their special qualities to their customers. Their son Paul had recently come into the business from college and saw the need to differentiate their own turkeys and developed the multi prize-winning KellyBronze brand.
In 1989 Derek and Mollie had a visit from Delia Smith researching a new Christmas book – and that became a lifelong friendship which extended to Derek becoming an associate director of Norwich City Football Club of which Delia and her husband were the owners.
His prominent role in the industry was recognised by the award by the Queen of an MBE ‘for Services to the British Poultry Industry’ in 1997.
Their family had started playing a more important role in the business, initially Lynne and then Paul to whom Derek in his mid 70s handed over the managing director role in 2007. Rather than retire Derek continued a very active role in poultry affairs and also became involved in two City of London Livery Companies for Poulters and Farmers.
He was also looking for other interests and his wife – a butcher’s daughter – suggested he might look at producing traditional quality beef. This became a major interest in developing a breeding programme for Aberdeen-Angus then also Wagyu cattle which gave him great pleasure.
Today Kelly Turkeys breed and hatch one quarter of all fresh Christmas turkeys in the UK, grow 250,000 turkeys themselves, and are the world’s only fully integrated turkey supply chain.
In a tribute to his father Paul Kelly said: “Dad had 95 wonderful years and was blessed to work in an industry he loved and was devoted to. He passed away peacefully at home just as he had wished.”
His funeral will be on Tuesday March 3, details are available from nicola@kellyturkeys.com