Longtime Illinois pork producer takes pride in raising food

Editor’s note: This is the start of a series on veteran pork producers.

One of Curt Zehr’s first memories is helping his father in the farrowing house at a young age.

Now 66, Zehr showed his first pig at the age of 6, and after the age of 9 he had his own litters in 4-H and his own sows in FFA.

Zehr operates Zehr Farms near Washington, Illinois, raising pigs along with corn, soybeans and some wheat.

They have a 140-head farrow-to-finish Duroc herd. Zehr said they try to sell their commercial boars across the country. The farm sells its own meat, genetics and market hogs.

“We have sold genetics from Pennsylvania to California,” he said.

Zehr started farming full time with his father and grandfather following his graduation from the University of Illinois in 1981.

The Zehrs have raised Duroc hogs since the 1940s and sold and exhibited them successfully.

Over the years, Zehr has seen changes in the pork industry. One of those changes is that the industry has moved from most farmers owning their own sows to being more specialized.

“Lots of farms only have farrowing, finishing or nurseries,” he said. “Now many sites are segregated by pig flow.”

Zehr said there have also been changes in contract finishing rather than owning the pigs.

The way that hogs are marketed has also changed. Zehr said they used to market pigs at a stockyard, and now those places are not available.

“We have a Tyson buy station that we call a week to 10 days ahead for a time to market animals,” he said. “Avenues of marketing are more limited.”

The number of hogs in each operation used to be smaller as well.

“When I first started there weren’t huge units with 50-1,000 sows, and a lot of packers owned pigs as well,” Zehr said.

This has changed the dynamic of the industry, he said. He said over the last 20 years, his view of the pork industry has changed from raising pigs to raising food.

“Now when somebody comes to us and buys a Christmas ham, I take a lot of satisfaction in that. It’s a big deal to be part of somebody’s Christmas dinner when they use a Zehr Farms ham,” he said.

Some people have asked Zehr why he hasn’t retired at his age, and he explained that there are two reasons.

The first is that he has two really good employees, he said, and the other is that he still enjoys doing what he does.

“I’m going to do this until I physically can’t or something happens to me,” he said.