Hermanson family raises corn, soybeans and 300,000 turkeys while embracing conservation practices, automation and a strong commitment to being good neighbors.

For more than 150 years, Nick Hermanson’s family has raised crops and livestock right outside Story City. For the last 50 years or so, those efforts have been focused on row crops and turkeys.

Nick and Katie Hermanson are the fifth generation on the land. They work alongside Nick’s parents, Al and Karen Hermanson, and several other family members and farmhands.

The Hermanson farm grows corn and soybeans and produces about 300,000 turkeys per year, sold to and processed by West Liberty Foods. The family are founding members of West Liberty Foods, a farmer-owned turkey processor, which started in 1996.

Nick said the family has had turkeys since the 1940s, initially raising the birds on pasture. They moved the flock under roof in the 1970s and have continued to grow the business since then.

Today, Hermanson’s turkeys are raised to about 45 pounds, which takes just shy of 20 weeks. The birds are processed for use mostly as sandwich meat.

Until 1997, they also had a dairy herd. “We were to the point where the dairy facilities were old and we needed to build new or get out,” Nick said. “Being so close to town, we decided it was best to get out of milking.”

Nick and Katie have three children: Gavin, Charlotte and Lucy. They stay busy off the farm, shuttling kids between activities and sports. Nick is also a member of the Story County Farm Bureau board and a past county president.

Being a good neighbor

In addition to raising healthy birds in the best possible conditions, Nick works hard to be a good neighbor to Story City. Their farm is located on the southern edge of the city limits, less than a 5 minute drive from the center of town.

“Overall, it’s a positive relationship with the city. We do our best to be good neighbors,” Nick said. “We’ve heard some complaints about the smell, so we store the manure indoors and try to clean out the buildings on days when the wind is light and not blowing toward town.”

They use the turkey litter to fertilize their corn acres, applying much of it as side-dressing during the summer to maximize uptake and limit runoff.

Nick said side-dressing fertilizer is just one of the conservation efforts on the farm. They also practice strip tilling, incorporate cover crops on about two-thirds of their acres and have built terraces for water management.

“You have to protect the topsoil,” Nick noted. “The only reason we’re here is that we have good topsoil and it rains. Otherwise, this place would be a desert.”

Staffing and technology

Another struggle Nick addresses is labor shortages, especially for the turkey buildings. Currently, he has five non-family staff on the turkey side of the business. He has added technology and automation to his buildings — one brooder site and two finishers, all located within 5 miles of the homeplace — to make the work easier on those he hires.

“You’ll never 100% remove the labor from farming or the animal husbandry part of the job, but it’s also no secret that it’s getting harder and harder to find people that want to go work in this environment day in and day out,” Nick said. “So anything we can do to allow our staff to still do the job but minimize the physical effort is great.”

Recently, he added small carts that staff can drive through the barns, limiting their physical contact with the turkeys and letting staff complete projects such as equipment maintenance.

A few years ago, Nick had the buildings converted to tunnel ventilation, which vastly improved conditions within the turkey barns and reduced bird mortalities. All the buildings are now equipped with internet-connected alarms that alert Nick’s phone when problems arise.

“We’ve added a lot of automation in the last few years,” Nick said. “There are always ways to improve efficiency, but for an operation our size, I think we’re pretty lean and optimized. We have the right number of people.”

Biosecurity focused

One key to raising healthy turkeys is Nick’s focus on maintaining a robust biosecurity program at all his sites.

“We’ve been lucky to avoid HPAI (highly pathogenic avian influenza) so far,” he said, referencing outbreaks of the deadly bird disease across the U.S. in recent years.

Wild bird control is a big part of those efforts. The buildings are regularly checked and secured against entry by birds or other pests that could carry bird droppings in. 

Nick also installed a laser-based wild bird deterrent system at one of his sites but noted, “We’re limited on what we can do because we’re so close to town.”

He’s a stickler for limiting cross-contamination between sites. “I’m to the point where I have one pair of boots for each farm.”

He also washes off vehicles and tires between locations and has worked closely with staff to make sure the biosecurity rules are followed.