Celebrate Poultry Days in Versailles

Versailles was once known as Chicken City by the truckers who regularly passed through town. Home to poultry producers and chicken processors, the Darke County village has long embraced that history with its annual Poultry Days festival held each summer. 

Darke County, along with neighboring Mercer County, is the center of Ohio’s egg and poultry industry, and our state boasts the second-highest level of egg production in the nation. Versailles’ tradition of celebrating this heritage began with informal community barbecues in the early 20th century. 

“It started when businesses on a Thursday afternoon would shut down early ... and they all came together and just had a barbecue,” says Poultry Days board member Eric Stachler. 

During this time, many businesses in the area not only raised chickens, but also produced feed, cages and incubators. The original Poultry Days barbecues in the following years morphed into mini trade shows. 

“After that, the community festival part started to emerge,” Stachler says. “Over the years, those early trade show things went away.”

The first official Poultry Days festival was held in 1952 in the parking lot of Versailles’ original high school. In the early 1970s, Poultry Days grew into a three-day festival held annually on the second full weekend in June. (It’s set for June 12 through 14 in 2026.) 

During that time, the festival added carnival rides and an automated system of cooking the chicken for its famous barbeque dinners.  

“We partnered with Nelson’s Port-A-Pit out of Indiana. It’s a portable barbecue fueled with real charcoal,” Stachler says. “It’s got an automated rotisserie in it. I think there’s a couple different variations of the machines, but the big ones are putting out, like 240 halves every two hours. We have 10 to 12 of those machines here.”

The chicken dinners are the centerpiece of Poultry Days. The chickens are roasted after being basted in a secret-recipe marinade and served with potato chips, a roll, applesauce and traditional Chilly Willee orange drink. 

The festival, which is now held at the Versailles Village Schools’ district board of education, also includes live music, art shows, vendors and the Poultry Days 5K. Last year, the community that is home to approximately 2,700 people produced 40,179 chicken dinners over the three-day period. 

“The best part of the chicken dinner is not the chicken, it’s not the flavor,” Stachler says. “It’s the pride the community has in the chicken.” 459 S. Center St., Versailles 45380, versaillespoultrydays.com

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