Poultry World
Poultry World is a monthly British magazine and website serving the egg and poultry farming sectors, with reporting on production, bird health, nutrition and the business of commercial poultry keeping. Headquartered in London and now published by Misset Uitgeverij B.V., it is one of the oldest continuously published titles in British agriculture. Its roots reach back to 1874, long before intensive egg and poultrymeat production existed, and its history mirrors the transformation of poultry keeping in Britain from a cottage and exhibition pursuit into a modern, large-scale food-producing industry. Formerly a sister magazine to Farmers Weekly, it combined for many years a British print edition with an increasingly international digital presence at poultryworld.net, covering broilers, layers, breeders, ducks and turkeys for professional readers.
Origins as The Fancier's Gazette in 1874
The magazine began life as a weekly titled The Fancier's Gazette – a Breeders and Exhibitors Journal. Its first issue appeared on 11 April 1874, edited by Lewis Wright and priced at twopence. Despite the later poultry-only focus suggested by its modern name, the early Gazette was far from narrow. Alongside poultry it carried regular sections on dogs, pigeons and rabbits, reflecting the Victorian world of the "fancy" – the community of breeders who kept and exhibited pedigree animals. A strong emphasis on showing ran through the early issues. At the same time, the paper offered practical advice for what it called the "gentleman poultry keeper", including guidance on keeping foxes out of chicken coops, preparing eggs for hatching and treating common ailments such as egg-bound birds. That blend of exhibition news and practical husbandry established a pattern – serving both the committed breeder and the working keeper – that the title retained as it evolved.
Becoming Poultry World
As poultry grew in importance within its pages, the title was refocused. The Fancier's Gazette became The Poultry World in the first decade of the twentieth century – Farmers Weekly's anniversary history dates the change to 1907 – reflecting a deliberate tightening of coverage to poultry alone. The new title was still aimed in part at the fancy, but readers responded to what anniversary accounts describe as its bright and breezy articles, and the commercial side of poultry keeping steadily gained ground. In 1968 the magazine incorporated its sister title Poultry Farmer, consolidating two strands of poultry journalism under one masthead. Over the decades the visual identity changed repeatedly: a green livery in the immediate post-war years, a red masthead until the mid-1960s, then blue, which remained a feature of the cover for some four decades, before a reduction to A4 format in May 2006 brought a return to a blue, black and white design carrying a small Farmers Weekly logo.
Campaigning and the Eggs for the Wounded scheme
Poultry World has never seen itself as a passive observer of its sector. During its early decades it campaigned on behalf of a readership that anniversary histories put at more than 30,000. Its best-known campaign began as Hospital Egg Week and evolved in 1914, at the start of the First World War, into the National Eggs for the Wounded scheme. The initiative channelled eggs from British poultry keepers to Army hospitals in England and France, and at its height more than a million eggs a week were being sent to wounded servicemen. The episode remains a defining part of the magazine's identity: it showed a trade and hobby paper acting as an organiser of its community, using its pages to coordinate a national voluntary effort. Anniversaries of the magazine have repeatedly returned to the scheme as evidence of the publication's long-standing relationship with its readers.
Growth between the wars and the post-war decades
Through the 1920s and 1930s the magazine continued to grow after a move to Dorset House in Stamford Street, near Waterloo Station in London. Issues typically ran to around 40 pages a week. While the fancy was still catered for, the front of the magazine was increasingly aimed at commercial producers, with management and nutrition taking up ever more column inches – an early sign of the professionalisation that would define post-war poultry farming. The notable poultry journalist George May edited the title from 1940 to 1963, a tenure spanning the Second World War and the end of food rationing in 1953, after which intensive egg and poultrymeat production emerged in earnest. By the time May took over, the cover price had reached sixpence. He handed the editorship to Frank Burton in 1963 but continued to contribute a weekly "on and off the record" commentary for the rest of the decade.
The 140th anniversary and a changing sector
In April 2014 Poultry World marked its 140th anniversary as Farmers Weekly's sister title, using the milestone to look back at both its own development and the evolution of the sector it covers. The anniversary edition charted how poultry production had changed from what was at most a cottage industry – described in the coverage as a haven for ex-servicemen – into a thriving, modern food-producing sector. An exclusive anniversary survey sought to establish the "greatest" people and moments in the sector's history. In the people category, readers voted Kelly Turkeys founder Derek Kelly the greatest living poultry person, while the late Bernard Matthews was judged the greatest poultry person of the past. The biggest disaster, unsurprisingly, was identified as Edwina Currie's 1988 comments on salmonella in eggs, and the greatest development as the resurrection of the Lion scheme that helped repair the damage to the egg market that followed. The exercise illustrated the magazine's role as a record-keeper and forum for its industry, not simply a news outlet.
Ownership changes and the move to Misset
For much of its modern life Poultry World sat within the Reed Business Information and RELX stable alongside Farmers Weekly. That arrangement ended in January 2019, when RELX sold its Dutch agricultural media and selected international agricultural media portfolio to Doorakkeren BV. Poultry World was part of that portfolio, while Farmers Weekly was sold separately later. Doorakkeren went on to found Misset Uitgeverij B.V. to manage the acquired titles, and Misset remains the magazine's publisher. The change separated Poultry World from its long-time British sister title and placed it within a Netherlands-based specialist agricultural publisher with a strongly international portfolio – a fitting home for a title whose digital edition had already become global in outlook.
The 2017 merger with World Poultry
A second strand of the modern Poultry World story runs through its international namesake. Around thirty years before 2017, World Poultry had been created as a spin-off of the British Poultry World within Reed Business Information, and the British title stood at the heart of what became a global brand. On 16 January 2017 the two joined forces: World Poultry adopted the Poultry World name in honour of their combined heritage, and poultryworld.net became the shared outlet for the combined operation, with the British team strengthening the global presence. The relaunch was presented as a return to strong roots – the international title taking the name of its 142-year-old inspirer – while preserving the in-depth reporting readers expected. Editors Fabian Brockötter and Jake Davies fronted the announcement, promising to stay on top of developments worldwide and keep readers informed of the latest innovations, know-how and industry updates.
What Poultry World covers
The modern Poultry World addresses the full production chain for poultry professionals. Its reporting spans breeding and genetics – including research into breeding healthier laying hens and on-farm broiler breeder studies – alongside nutrition, with detailed work on gut health, feed additives and the role of dietary protein in carcass quality and feed conversion. Health coverage is extensive, taking in vaccination best practice for breeder and broiler flocks, avian influenza outbreaks and their market consequences, biosecurity, water sanitation and diseases such as spotty liver disease in free-range layers. Production and management features cover hatcheries, housing systems including the transition from caged to cage-free egg production, egg handling and quality, and duck breeding. Market and industry reporting follows trade, prices and policy across countries, from Ukraine's search for export markets to cage-free transitions in China and egg price movements in India, while business updates track company moves across the feed and animal health industries.
Readership, frequency and circulation
Poultry World is a monthly magazine, a frequency it settled into after its long early life as a weekly. Its certified monthly circulation was 2,867 in 2011, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations – a modest figure that reflects its specialist, professional audience rather than a consumer readership. Media directories have praised its strong editorial approach and its value as a source of information for those breeding or rearing poultry in any capacity. That professional focus is the title's defining characteristic: it is written for people who produce eggs and poultrymeat for a living, and for the nutritionists, veterinarians, breeders and suppliers who work with them, rather than for backyard keepers.
Poultry World today
Today Poultry World operates as a multimedia brand in which the print magazine and the poultryworld.net website work together, with digital editions of the magazine published online alongside daily news and analysis. A 2024 editorial marking forty years since Misset launched its global poultry venture in 1984 reflected on how both brand and industry had seen what it called unimaginable progress, while noting that the core challenges – mitigating disease and optimising performance – now sit alongside newer demands around welfare and sustainability. The stated mission, the publisher says, has never changed: providing the information with which the poultry sector can progress to a higher level. From a twopenny Victorian fanciers' paper to an international professional platform, Poultry World has kept that single-subject commitment for more than 150 years.
