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Featured Farm oF the m onth

The “Featured Farm of the Month” idea came up when members of the Medford FFA group attended the National FFA Convention in Indianapolis, Indiana. They were reminded that farmers are the roots of FFA and the backbone of our community. It is important that we recognize our local farmers and show appreciation to the small, but extremely vital group of people. The FFA members, along with advisor Lisa Kopp, ag teacher Casey Anderson, and Rural Mutual Insurance Company agent Ember Ackerman worked on the idea together.

Jenny Rothmeier is the proud owner of Krug’s Northwoods Game Birds, Inc. who is following in her mother’s footsteps.

Susan Krug purchased 3 birds in 1977 and over the years it has grown to a maximum of 700,000 birds! In 2022, the farm gathered 1 million eggs and hatched 700,000 chicks. Demand of pheasants and their eggs is very high! One of Jenny’s favorite things to do on her farm is to put anti-pecking devices known as peepers on the birds. The “peepers” are put on so that the pheasants can’t see well enough to fight with other pheasants. This ensures that she has a high quality product to sell.

Throughout her farm you will see a variety of components. In breeder pens there are 300 hens and 32 roosters. Each hen can typically lay around 85 eggs a season. In grower pens there can be hundreds of pheasants. There are up to 220,000 eggs in the incubators, and 75,000 eggs in the hatchers. This integral part of her business is highly managed with temperature and humidity sensors, as well as an alarm system if a door is opened. Over the years she has selected to breed specific traits into and out of her farm pheasants. For example, Jenny won’t incubate blue or white eggs due to the low hatching rate. Another example Jenny tries to carry on in genetics is a long tailed rooster, high tail carriage roosters, a blue-green colored back, as well as a consistent sized bird. Jenny keeps around 120,000 chicks for her farm. 25,000 will be sold as 7 week old starter birds. 77,000 will be sold to hunt and conservation clubs. Finally, 18,000 of them will be her next season’s breeding stock.

Watching Jenny tell us about the farm, her staff, customers, family, friends, and community was truly inspiring. Jenny is a very sweet farmer, and really cares about her pheasants and customers. In a male dominating industry, she has sure made a name for herself. This recent winter gave her some hardships, many of her pheasants got out, pens collapsed and were destroyed. With the support of the community, she was able to recover the majority of her loose birds! While she has yet to rebuild her damaged pens, she is very grateful for the endless support she received to make the best out of the situation.

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