KALONA

Have you ever heard of a chicken brokerage? Essentially, that is what Riverland Poultry does: it buys, raises, and sells chickens, all for the “little farmer,” according to owner James Yoder.

“I am a broker,” Yoder said with a laugh. “Since the first of September, I've been to Washington State, California, Indiana, Nashville, South Carolina [and] Massachusetts [for chicken deliveries]. We go everywhere, dealing with the little guys.”

Yoder has delivered chickens to over half of the United States, 26 of them. He must remain cognizant of different laws and regulations in each state as some are more stringent than others.

Through delivering chickens, Yoder has been able to build a network of other chicken farmers across the country who help each other out sourcing and selling chickens.

Riverland poultry produces nearly 100,000 hens each year, raising them from day-old chicks to ready-to-lay adults, and Yoder does the logistics to place them in farms where they will lay eggs. 5,000 here, 2,000 there, it’s a complex puzzle that Yoder needs to stay atop of to make sure every hen is sold and the farmers he works with get the hens they need.

To complete this puzzle, Riverland Poultry raises pullets (young hens) in 20-week cycles, leaving two weeks to clean and prep before the next batch of chicks arrives. Each of his barns can house as many as 25,000 birds. The farm has their hens booked up to 2025, meaning the hens are sold before they’re even born.

This cycle doesn’t stop Yoder from bonding with the young birds.

“It's good to walk through your birds just to get them accustomed to people,” Yoder said. “It seems like the chicken actually knows if somebody cares about her.”

Currently, the farm houses 25,400 pullets and roughly 45,400 total birds.

“By the middle of March, these [pullets] are going to be out. That's when you move a lot of birds,” Yoder said. “Everybody wants chickens, and I can sell anything but a dead bird in March and April,” he joked.

Yoder, who bought the Kalona farm in 2001, made the switch to a cage-free environment in 2006.

Raising and moving the flocks requires a lot of work. One barn’s worth of pullets will eat nearly 12 tons of feed – consisting of mostly corn and soybeans – during their stay on the farm. The farm also works around-the-clock to keep the pullets warm, with barn temperatures around 90° when the baby chicks first arrive.

“I like to get [the barn] good and warm because the challenge to get them started is [to] get them to drink water,” Yoder said. “Feed is not the big issue.”

Workers on the farm will feed the pullets by hand for a while, showing them where their food is. After that, they’re automatically fed on timers.

When the time comes to move them, the Riverland Poultry team will round the hens up at night, waiting for the birds to collect in the cages and closing the doors on them. The pullets are easier to handle at night as they’ll huddle together, making capture simple.

They do all of this work in just three barns, although the farm is having a fourth barn built this autumn.

Although not a certified organic farm, the birds eat organic feed and staff remain ever vigilant against diseases like Avian Influenza (AI) and Coryza. To prevent these diseases, they utilize mats with disinfectants that kill bacteria on shoes. They also vaccinate the birds more often than minimally required to keep their birds as healthy as possible.

Yoder does this because of the love he has developed for the chickens, as he’s worked with them since he was 15 years old. It is not just a business; it is a source of fun for Yoder.

“You get out here six or seven days a week, you're getting something done just taking care of baby chicks, and I enjoy the baby chicks,” Yoder said. “The one thing that I liked was agriculture for fun, I like the farming. [When you have] chores in the morning, by eight o'clock you’ve already got something accomplished. When I didn't have livestock, it might be noon and I think I haven't accomplished anything.”

Although it may require more time in the office and on the road rather than inside the barns filled with growing chicks, Yoder’s willingness to accommodate small farmers has made him a dependable source for young hens. With his help, operations that began with backyard flocks have evolved into small businesses that sell eggs to local markets.

While brokering chickens, Riverland Poultry brokers success, both locally and across the country.