Bronze Turkeys Gain Commercial Attention

By 1986, our bronze turkeys were beginning to attract attention, but turning that interest into a commercially sustainable business remained difficult. We had started developing the KellyBronze in 1984, building up bronze breeding stock as an alternative to the white-feathered turkeys that had come to dominate British production. Industry records confirm that Derek Kelly expanded bronze numbers and registered the KellyBronze name during this period. The attention did not immediately translate into sufficient sales. Maintaining a specialist breeding farm was expensive, and our own records from 1986 recall that we were not selling enough bronze turkeys to make the operation financially viable and that the bank was becoming concerned. Independent poultry-industry accounts similarly describe these early years as a period of financial difficulty, with Paul Kelly struggling to persuade butchers to take the bronze birds. Despite those pressures, we continued with the breeding programme. The experience demonstrated that gaining recognition for the bronze turkey and establishing a sustainable market for it were two different challenges; wider commercial demand would take several more years to develop.