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Contract hog finishing expanding in Nebraska

Open house at a new hog facility near Blair, Nebraska

Open house at a new hog facility near Blair, Nebraska

Contract finishing of hogs is expanding in Nebraska.

One of the newest facilities is on John Tyson’s farm north of Blair in Washington County.

“I raised hogs from 1980 to about 1998 and then I finally got out of hogs,” Tyson says. “Now the boys are back on the farm and we need to diversify the family operation—so that’s what we’re doing.”

The Tysons will be finishing hogs for The Maschhoffs, a large hog operation based in Illinois. John Tyson tells Brownfield the extra income will be helpful, but he’s also excited about the manure those pigs produce.

“It’s basically a fertilizer factory for us,” he says. “I figure that this building, once a year, we’ll get around 40-thousand dollars worth of fertilizer out of it.”

AUDIO: John Tyson

Al Stephens with The Maschhoffs says Nebraska is one of the company’s major growth areas.

“From a company standpoint—and an industry standpoint—the Nebraska hog industry sees a huge opportunity here to grow,” Stephens says. “There’s a lot of corn here that gets exported and we all believe it would be better to feed that to local livestock. And so we’re trying to do whatever we can to help grow that.”

AUDIO: Al Stephens

Willow Holoubek with the Alliance for the Future of Agriculture in Nebraska (A-FAN) is pleased that more hog finishing facilities are being built. But she says there’s still plenty of room for growth in the state.

“We’re still exporting about 25 to 30 percent of our pigs out of state, to be fed someone else’s corn, and then to come back to our food processors in Nebraska,” Holoubek says. “So the opportunity is huge.”

AUDIO: Willow Holoubek

A-FAN is working to help grow Nebraska’s livestock industry. They helped sponsor an open house at the Tyson’s new facility near Blair.

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