| FFA Nation

For Duane Unruh from Peabody, Kansas, pastured poultry means profits

10/29/2010 |

Duane Unruh’s a businessman. He always has been, he says, or at least since third grade.

“I was in 4-H and needed a project,” Duane recalls. “Everybody I knew was getting into hogs.”

Back then Duane lived at home in Peabody, Kan. Today he’s a junior at Kansas State University and a collegiate member of the Peabody-Burns FFA. Pigs have never been his thing.

“My dad suggested I try something else,” he says. “So I thought of poultry.”

Poultry, it turns out, was the way to go.

“That first year I started with about 50 hens and butchered maybe 100 broilers,” Duane says. He put the birds on pasture, allowing them to graze the grass, eat insects and get plenty of sunshine. They ate grain, too, but not as much as they would have if they weren’t outside. The hens lived in one spacious mobile shed, while the broilers, which Duane raised for meat, lived in another. Each day he’d collect eggs from the hens and move the pens to a new spot in the field. He sold the eggs; processed the broilers by hand; and sold the meat, by the pound, to friends, neighbors and other locals.
“I loved it,” he says. “So I kept at it throughout grade school, then in high school and FFA, and each year it’s grown a little bit bigger.”
This year, says Duane, who eventually named his business Unruh Pasture Fresh Poultry, he’s running 370 hens. He’ll also raise around a thousand broilers. “I have no idea how big it will get before we decide to stop.”

A Better Chicken
By “we,” Duane means his family. He runs his business on his parents’ property in Peabody, where there’s more than enough acreage to keep his flocks happy. While he’s in school, his dad does the day-to-day chores, topping off the water and feed and moving the coops across the field. On “harvest day,” sometimes a cousin, or even his grandmother, will assist with the butchering.

“They all help me along whenever they can,” he says.

All that work ultimately leads to what he and his customers consider a top-of-the-line product. His birds never get hormones or antibiotics. Their entire lives are spent healthy, happy and outdoors.

“I have people buying chicken from me who won’t buy it anywhere else,” he explains. “Instead of going to the supermarket, they’ll wait until my birds are ready and then buy enough to last them until the next round.”

Duane sells both from home and at a local farmers market. He also sells to a few local retailers.

“Most of my sales are word-of-mouth,” he says. “People hear about us and want to give it a try.”

A Long Road
When he started high school, Duane recalls, he “wasn’t that motivated.” He liked raising and marketing chickens, but didn’t consider it a serious business. When he joined FFA freshman year, he says, that changed fast.

“My ag teacher really pushed me, and with all the contests and things, it started to become more interesting.”

Before long, Duane turned his hobby into his supervised agricultural experience program (SAE). He honed his sales pitch, refined his operations, built his customer base, and, for the contests, polished his presentations.

“Each year,” he says, “things evolved. I was always trying new stuff, and when it worked I would try to make it even better.” The business grew. Then, in 2009, as a sophomore in college, Duane won a National FFA Proficiency Award for his work.

“That was pretty cool,” he says.

Big Ambitions
Right now college takes up most of Duane’s time. He’s majoring in entrepreneurship, he says, and is trying to earn a minor in animal science. He’s also working toward his American FFA Degree. The trip from campus to his parents’ house in Peabody takes nearly two hours, so he makes the commute on weekends only.
He explains, “I’ll go back and move the hens or work with the broilers, whatever needs to be done.”

It’s then, says Duane, out in the fields, when it really sinks in why he loves his work.

“I’ll go out there early in the morning, see them running around, do the chores, and then a lot of times I’ll just sit down and watch,” he says. “For me it’s just calming. It feels good.”