Serving the Industry With Integrity

Since 1957

John Melhorn started out selling chicks for Dekalb in 1957 after serving our country in the US Navy. In order to support the chick sales part of his business, John Melhorn built his own pullet house in 1958 in Mount Joy, PA. He also utilized his father’s breeder layer house and hatchery enabling Melhorn to more fully integrate itself into the layer industry. Biosecurity became a staple of John’s business and culture because of the high stakes involved with handling breeders.

In the early 1960’s, as chicken houses began to grow in size, John saw the need to provide full time poultry catching crews for his customers. The crews initially consisted of mostly school-aged kids who were capable of loading 5,000 birds a night into coop trucks. In 1965, John purchased his first truck to haul live poultry. All the while, this entire operation was being run from John’s home in Mount Joy, Pennsylvania.

During the 1980’s Pennsylvania experienced a catastrophic Avian Influenza outbreak that all but shut down the layer industry in the state. This experience taught the company once again that clean equipment and the proper storage of that equipment was very important. As a result, Melhorn has committed to keeping its clean and sanitized pullet equipment inside after being washed to ensure there is no contamination from wild avian species.

In 1984, John purchased a plot of land on Main Street in Mount Joy which continues to be the base of our operations to this day.

Once settled at its new property, Melhorn was able to expand its trucking and crew capabilities. In the mid 1980’s Melhorn focused on increasing its trucking fleet, establishing its full-time bird handling crews, and promoting the Dekalb chick through its sales and service team. These services continued to grow until the late 1990’s when Dekalb was sold, and Melhorn lost its ability to sell chicks.

In 2008, John Melhorn’s son, Astin, joined Melhorn’s team full time as the Chief Operations Officer after graduating from Messiah College. Astin had worked for the company from 2003 in a part-time capacity learning how to handle live poultry, sanitize equipment, run poultry crews, drive truck, and complete office work. Astin’s experience and education gave new direction to Melhorn while still adhering to the core values instilled by John.

In 2012, Melhorn partnered with Maple Lodge Farms to begin to offer a spent hen removal service to the local layer industry. This relationship benefited many of Melhorn’s customers in that it added value and provided a humane outlet for their hens after the laying cycle was complete. This partnership also enabled Melhorn to expand its bird handling crews and trucks outside of Pennsylvania which eventually led to a location for Melhorn in Ohio.

In 2019, Astin Melhorn purchased a poultry handling service, MainJoy Unlimited. This purchase enabled Melhorn to further expand its poultry handling capabilities with trained crew, and quality leadership. Also, in 2019, Melhorn segregated its poultry management services in an effort to offer a specialized team of highly-trained staff to focus solely on layer & broiler management. This entity was named, in honor of the late John Wolgemuth Melhorn, JWM Poultry Solutions.

Today between Melhorn Sales Service & Trucking Co., MainJoy Unlimited, LLC, and JWM Poultry Solutions, LLC, we are proud to say that we have established a team that can offer a full service option to the layer producer. We offer quality support from the day the chick is housed until the day she is humanely removed from production.