Marshall Durbin Companies

Marshall Durbin Companies was a major poultry producer founded in Birmingham in 1930 by Marshall Durbin Sr.

Durbin had begun working in real estate, but the effects of the October 1929 stock market crash changed his plans. With $500 borrowed from a friend he opened a fish stand, expanding to a second location in 1932, adding live poultry to his offerings to boost summer sales. He soon enlisted institutional customers and opened a dressing and distribution facility in 1935.

In 1940 Durbin purchased a 3-story building in Downtown Birmingham to house new poultry processing and refrigeration equipment and was able to serve customers in South Alabama. The company operated a retail store at 2816 18th Street South in downtown Homewood.

With the onset of World War II Marshall Durbin began supplying military contracts as well. After the war he modernized and expanded the plant's capacity to 2,000 birds per hour and opened a processing plant and sales office in Mobile while also recruiting growers in North Alabama. In 1948 Durbin co-founded the Southeastern Poultry and Egg Association. He also helped found the National Broiler Council in 1954

In 1952 Marshall Durbin opened a hatchery in Birmingham which could produce 200,000 chicks per week for its network of farmers. The company expanded its Mobile processing plant and opened a distribution facility in New Orleans, Louisiana. By the mid 1950s the company was producing more than 2 million birds a year. Through the early 1960s Marshall Durbin continued to expand with new hatcheries in Haleyville and Washington County, a 9,600 bird-per-hour processing plant in Jasper, a bulk feed station in State Line, Mississippi. In 1965 the company opened its own feed mill in Haleyville in response to a price hike from Ralston Purina.

During the late 1960s the company expanded its transportation capabilities and expanded its Jasper processing plant. In 1968 Marshall Durbin acquired the poultry production division of the Merchants Company at Hattiesburg, Mississippi, including a processing plant, rendering plant and hatchery. It expanded the Hattiesburg plant, increasing its capacity to 9,600 birds per hour, and adding an ice plant and warehouse with a fleet garage.

From 1969 to 1972 Marshall Durbin briefly operated fast-food restaurants in Dothan and Enterprise, Alabama and Carrolton, Georgia. In 1970 the company built a new corporate office and processing plant in Birmingham. He co-founded the National Broiler Marketing Association shortly before his death from leukemia in 1971.

When Marshall Durbin Jr took over the company, it was processing about 40 million birds per year. He led the acquisition of several Mississippi-based companies, supplemented by construction of a new feed mill in Waynesboro, a new processing plant in Canton, and a research facility in Jackson. The Birmingham hatchery closed in 1976 as a second Haleyville opened. By 1996 the company had nearly tripled its production to 111 million chickens per year. Marshall Durbin Jr's daughters Melissa and Elise inherited the business in 2001.

The company was acquired by Mar-Jac Poultry of Gainesville, Georgia in January 2014.