EPISODE 3 - A Trip Down Victory Road (Seth Keplinger)

And obviously with your construction management background, man, you like them concrete trucks, that's for sure.

Yeah,

I do like concrete trucks, yes.

What is this thing that you're pouring at your house right now? It looks like a Walmart.

Yeah, so it's going to be a new sow barn, all slatted.

We'll essentially be able to house about 140 sows in there.

We'll have like 40 individual pens that are 5x8, so we're going to be all Prop 12 approved.

We'll have 24 8x12s and then a little office slash lab to be able to, you know, if we want to use frozen semen.

We bought frozen semen, we've yet to use the frozen semen.

But I thought it would be a lot easier if we had it right there where we can walk through a door and be able to breed sow.

So it's going to be fairly, I'm actually not, what I would tell you is I'm managing the construction on this, but I'm actually not doing as much as I normally do in terms of pouring concrete.

It's probably a little over my pay grade from that standpoint, just the size of it.

But yeah, that's what we're building currently.

Yeah, man, that's going to be awesome.

And I'd agree with you fully.

For anyone listening that's just trying to start up and you're doing pigs kind of part-time or on the side, however you want to look at that, I'd agree with Seth 100% that having your facility's where it's easy to manage is probably the only way to do it and just be consistent and successful if you've got another full-time job.

Because it's hard if you're working with facilities that are tough to kind of stay on top of it and do things that...

the way they need to be done.

So, uh, you talked about the facilities and then, you know, you talked about having your females, right? I think this would be a cool thing to kind of talk about as you're picking females at your farm.

Um, what, what would you say are some of the non-negotiables and some things that you do and maybe, uh, where's your focus at on the females you keep or buy or any of those things? What, uh, what, what are you looking for, for a female for Keplinger farm?

I think the number one thing is they need to look like ladies.

Um, They've got to definitely have some maternal value still in them.

I know the popular thing now can be a little bit is cut them out the side, and that's where your champions are made out of.

Sure, I'm not against that, but I would tell you that I guess in selecting females, they need to look like ladies, number one.

I would tell you build and just presence from the side has got to be number one in my opinion, just in terms of how they're constructed, in terms of longevity, but yet still giving those added things it takes to either win a show or sell a high-dollar board, those kind of things.