About Us
Fly’n K Farms is a 4th generation family farm located in the far NW corner of Iowa. My grandfather Ernst moved to this area from Germany as a little boy with his family in the late 1800’s. Ezra, my father remembers farming with only “horsepower” as a kid. Our farm has always had swine on a smaller scale of some sort generally farrowing 12 sows at a time farrow to finish. As a young boy I loved hauling “fat hogs” with my mom to the Sioux Falls Stockyards in the back of a pickup 12-13 head on at a time.
I, Lance grew up on this farm and graduated in 1994 from Iowa State University and came back to the farm at that time. In 1995 I married Kristi who grew up on a hog farm in central Illinois. All four of our sons have been active at some point in our Berkshire operation.
Around this period in time there was massive changes in the swine industry with the move towards large scale confinement swine operations. At this time, the swine industry was trying to compete with chicken in the market place and they developed a slogan “Pork…the other white meat” in which the packers started paying more for lean and more heavy muscled hogs. which in turn made it “Pork…the other white meat” and mainstream pork turned into a pale, dry, flavorless, and tough meat that we as a family did not enjoy eating anymore.
In 2010 we started with our first American Berkshire Association (ABA) registered breeding stock that originated from some of the finest proven meat quality seedstock in the USA. The ABA is the oldest swine registry in the world which was founded in 1875. It was very important to us to use genetics that can be traced back to the original breeding stock in 1875. The 100% registered Berkshire genetics that were maintained and bred by reputable breeders over the last 150 years have a finer muscle fiber which makes it more tender and juicier and is much darker in color (similar to beef) and is craved by the finer eating establishments around the world. In Japan they call the Berkshire pig “Kurobuta” which is a name that can be used interchangeably for Berkshire.
Fly’n K Berkshires first goal above all else that we are looking for is producing genetics that have the best meat quality in the world. To ensure that we are producing the best eating experience, Fly’n K Berkshires began participating in the National Barrow Show (NBS) Progeny Test in 2013 which was sponsored by Hormel and Iowa State University. The ABA started their own National Progeny Test in 2017 in which we try and test all of our sires to help guide our genetic selection regarding elite meat quality registered Berkshire genetics.
If your goals are to produce proven elite pork quality and work with animals that have been selected for generations for sows that can farrow unassisted and milk like a Jersey cow…Fly’n K Berkshires wants to work with you! We take great pride in having service after the sale. We consider our customers our partners in the breed as well as our friends. We are thankful for the blessings we have and we love to talk Berkshires so feel free to contact us with questions or inquires about breeding stock for sale.