Customer Stories

Located at Kalona, IA, Claude Greiner not only owns shares in barns managed by the Ottumwa Veterinary Clinic—he built them. Raised on a farm near Keota, IA, Claude met Dr. Steve Menke when the veterinarian (then practicing in Richland, IA) visited the farm and diagnosed his first case of PGE.

A year or so before investing in his first jointly-owned farrowing unit, Dennis Fultz played a key role in changing a Minnesota law that would’ve prevented more than five people from joining together to build such a unit.

Dave Hamm’s long-term goal, after farming for 37 years, is to pass the opportunity to a new generation. But at one point in Dave’s life, it looked like his own opportunity to farm had disappeared.

Craig Wulfekuhle has raised pigs for 12 years since returning from a stint in agribusiness. He currently owns and manages a wean-to-finish business. He also is president of a local sow unit that supplies his operation with 1,800 pigs every four to five weeks.

“One generation makes. The next generation uses. The third generation loses.” Chris Veldhuizen heard this warning countless times from his grandfather Christiaan, who came to America from the Netherlands and moved his family to the farm north of Edgerton, MN, in 1936.

Steve Vander Maten always had an interest in agriculture. When a door opened for him to start farming in 1985, he walked through it.

Donnie Bloes (pronounced Blaze) sells feed and finishes pigs. He and his dad Jerry own B&B Farm Store, a retail business and feed mill in Jesup, Iowa, just east of Waterloo. Jerry has worked in this business for 50 years, starting right out of high school.

Bringing their sons into the family business. That’s the near- and long-term objective of Greg and Paula Boerboom of Marshall, MN. Part of their strategy for reaching this objective involves a new feed mill (currently under construction) and access to more baby pigs.

The world is full of people who don’t enjoy their work, people who are doing the last thing they would have imagined when they were young.