posted on Thursday, January 19, 2017 in Central Region News
Cale and Connor Juergensen may not be identical when it comes to looks, but their goals have always been the same.
The brothers comprise two-thirds of a set of triplets (along with their sister Mackenize), and grew up tagging along with their father Chris as he took care of the family's hog operation.
"I remember standing in his shop and having Dad ask us, Are you going to build barns, or am I?" Connor says. "He really pushed us to make goals."
Chris Juergensen passed away nearly five years ago, just as his sons were in the process of building their first hog barn on the family's Greene County farm.
Today, Cale and Connor own two hog buildings and work as contract growers for Audubon-Manning Veterinary Clinic (AMVC) Management Services.
Their mother, Jill, owns four buildings, and her sons manage those buildings for her. They also rent the ground owned by their grandparents, Calvin and Erma Juergensen, and have worked several years for local farmers Roger and Linda Coon, who live near Lohrville.
"We have an arrangement with Roger and Linda where we trade our labor for the use of thier machinery," Cale says. "So we do everything with them, from planting to spraying to harvesting.
The family has been feeding pigs for AMVC for 10 years, Cale says, marketing 25,000 pigs annually.
The orginial two buildings went up in 1997 as the family fed pigs for a neighbor before eventually working with AMVC. Chris and Jill put up two new 2,400-head finishing buildings in 2007, and continued working with AMVC.
Pigs arrive at the farm weighing 13 pounds, and the brothers emphasize a healthy start when taking care of new pigs.
"We never really knew anything else," Cale says. "We grew up in the barns, helping Dad and watching how he did things. This is right where we wanted to be."
Story credit to Iowa Farmer Today. Read the full article here.