"I came to work at the Webb Feed Store on April the twentieth, of 1940, and I have been here ever since,” Fred McKinney said. Hugh Webb opened the feed store in 1936. The feed store is the oldest feed store in continuous operation in Benton County. “I came to work for Mr. Webb in 1940. In 1944 I married the boss’ daughter,” Fred said. “We have been married for 64 years now.” Fred’s son has worked at the feed store with his father all his life. Two of Fred’s grandsons also work with them at the store. Fred’s wife kept the books for the feed store up until the last few years. “We still have all the family over every Sunday for dinner,” Fred said. “We all still go to church together.”
Mr. Webb had a farm hatchery, eventually moving the hatchery to the town of Pea Ridge. “It was the first electric hatchery in the country,” Fred said. “It went by Webb’s Electric Hatchery. The rest of the hatcheries were hot water and kerosene and different types of heat,” he continued. “It was the infancy of the poultry growing business. Back then, it took 16 weeks to make a three pound chicken.” Now, a chicken grows to four pounds in just seven weeks because of improvements in breeding and growing conditions.
“Originally, I was hired to help blood test brooder hens for pylori,” Fred said. Fred attended a class provided by the Poultry Improvement Association for a week to become certified to test chickens. The hatchery went through the process of testing their flocks until they became a pylori clean hatchery. “We ran the hatchery for 25 years,” Fred said.
When Fred started working at the feed store, local growers were feeding Nutrina pellets to their chickens. “The chickens would fill up on pellets and wouldn’t have anything else to do but pick feathers,” Fred said. “When they would try to sell the chickens they would all be bare backs.” “My dad and another fella put in 800 chickens,” Fred said. “They went to Bentonville to the only Purina dealer in the area to get enough feed to feed out the chickens. They all grew feathers.” The feed store started carrying Purina feed. “We were one of the top Purina dealers in the business,” Fred said. “We moved from five to seven tons of feed a year. We qualified for Purina’s Honor Counsel for eight years, and we got to travel to Hawaii, San Francisco, New York and the Bahamas among other places,” Fred added. “We had a lot of fun back then.”
“The day John Kennedy was killed, I was at the University of Arkansas looking at the possibility of converting our broiler houses to produce eggs,” Fred said. “I bought 20,000 leghorn pullets that day.” A Purina salesman approached Fred to build turkey houses soon after he bought the pullets. The salesman said they could raise turkeys year round instead of just one season. With the new turkey houses, they would be able to run the processing plant year round instead of the usual six months eliminating seasonal layoffs. Fred sold the pullets to a friend and started building turkey houses. “We built enough turkey houses to raise 90,000 turkeys three times a year,” Fred said. He raised turkeys until 1991 or 1992.
Fred was the mayor of Pea Ridge for four years from 1953 to 1956. “I put the gas system in Pea Ridge,” Fred said. Someone asked him what he thought about the area getting water out of Beaver Lake. Fred said he couldn’t imagine it then, but is amazed at the area Beaver Lake now serves.
The family owns four properties where they have raised Santa Gertrudis, Beefmaster and now raise Angus-Beefmaster cross cattle along with turkeys. “We changed to cross breeds because breeding with Angus bulls adds ten cents a pound,” Fred said. “Over the years, we accumulated a thousand acres. We have sold it off except for around 250 acres since land prices have gone up.”
“We had four different growing operations and I was running until ten or eleven every night to keep up, I got wore down and help was hard to find. I just decided to take the cut and try to exist with the feed store,” Fred said.
The feed store was where a lot of the joy in the business came, anyway. “I like to visit with people. I’d hate to think I had to just sit around the house all day. It kind of amazes me how people will come for advice,” Fred said. “I had one girl come in and asked me why they painted barns red. I told her I guessed it was because red paint was cheap.”
