Eichelberger Farms has 62,500 sows and is one of the largest family-owned hog operations in the USA. Eichelberger Farms had its beginnings in 1966 when Dave Eichelberger bought four pregnant sows. He continued to add buildings, and by 1974, he was up to 400 sows and two sons. During the remainder of the 1970’s the addition of more buildings at the home farm brought him up to 800 sows.
Up until the 1990’s, he sold most of the pigs as feeder pigs every Wednesday at the Kalona Sales Barn. In 1993, he signed his first finishing contract with a local farmer to begin finishing out more pigs to be sold at market weight. Also, during the 1990’s, he began building more sow farms, as well as taking on some contract sow farms, and was up to 2,400 sows by 1997. By 2015, Eichelberger Farms was up to 40,000 sows and had outgrown the office at the feed mill in town, so a new office building was constructed on the east edge of Wayland, Iowa.
In 2003, Eichelberger Farms joined with several other producers to form Triumph Foods. Eichelberger Farms is part of Triumph Foods which has 435,000 sows in total between the five companies. Triumph Foods processes 5.2 million hogs annually.
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