Come sit with me and pet my chicken. Harvard TX - Sit-by-me Statues on Waymarking.com

Pilgrim's traces its origins to a feed store opened in 1946 in Pittsburg, Texas by Lonnie "Bo" Pilgrim and his older brother, Aubrey. The brothers were known to give away free chicks with the bags of feed they sold, thereby expanding their business. Bo Pilgrim, wearing traditional Pilgrim dress, with a pet chicken named "Henrietta" under his arm, is featured in Pilgrim's Pride advertisements.

Bo’s early process improvements allowed the company to dramatically reduce wasted grain, which used to be lost through the cracks of the floor in the feed store, and enabled the Pilgrim brothers to use automation to sell truckloads of feed out of the warehouse. "We began to grow in a way that, looking back, was a set of small but integrated steps. We didn’t know it at the time, of course, that our steps were linked in some way. We were simply responding to one opportunity after the next. In retrospect, the pieces of a fairly elaborate puzzle were beginning to fall into place," said Bo. Tragedy struck in 1966 when Aubrey Pilgrim died of a heart attack, leaving Bo to lead the company he had worked so hard to help establish. As Bo remembers, "I can't begin to tell you what a shock Aubrey’s death was to me. My whole world was shaken... Aubrey and I were brothers and business partners. Nobody was closer to me." After a long, sleepless night, Bo Pilgrim decided it was up to him to continue the Pilgrim's legacy. “That single decision gave my life direction from that day forward," he said. "I had every hope and intention and motivating desire to run the company to even greater heights. Failure was not an option."

Sources: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia and Pilgrims Pride History page.