Jack DeWitt, the original ’Big
Dutchman’, turned 100 years old on January 30th, 2011.
In 1938 Jack and his brother Dick DeWitt founded Big Dutchman and together
they designed, developed, and sold the first automatic poultry feeding
system. In addition to the revolutionary design featuring the flat chain
concept, which remains the most popular poultry feeding technology in the
world, they would develop many other products to modernize poultry
production.
Today Josef Meerpohl and his family are the sole owners of Big Dutchman
which is headed by Josef’s son, Bernd Meerpohl. Bernd, and Clovis Rayzel,
the president of Big Dutchman Inc., USA, who visited Jack at his home to wish
him a happy birthday. Jack was presented with a photo book in which Josef signed, "I will never forget that you brought the wonderful Big Dutchman idea into my life."
"Even today, the company is influenced daily by Jack’s simple, ageless way
of doing business", agreed Bernd and Clovis. Bernd went on to say, "Jack
DeWitt had a very simple philosophy, but it’s one that is time-tested in every way.
He was very customer-focused and market-oriented, and this is a
philosophy we hammer on every day."
Jack and Dick DeWitt shaped the company early on to become the worldwide
leading supplier for pig and poultry production. "We had a pretty good idea
that sure beat shoveling out bird feed by hand. We just had to take it out
to the rest of the world", recollects Jack.
Jack sold his interest in the company in 1968, but stayed on as an advisor
until 1971. In 1958, Josef Meerpohl from Vechta-Calveslage took over as
sales agent for Northern Germany. In 1985 he acquired the whole company
through a management buyout (at that time this did not include the sales
rights for North and South America).
Today, the headquarters of the family enterprise are located in
Vechta-Calveslage, Germany.
