A Stockman Reveals His Trade Secrets
Stockmanship. The innate ability by visual appraisal and common sense to know what works and what doesn’t work in raising livestock, and most importantly, to see what needs to happen next in order to move forward.
That’s how Everett Forkner, the newest member of the esteemed Saddle and Sirloin Portrait Gallery, defines the fine art of stockmanship.
“It’s that innate ability you develop over time, with training and experience,” says Forkner, a pig farmer from Richards, Mo. “The best stockmanship comes from getting out there and being on the firing line.”
He believes that’s the part some people miss today – the experience of being in the barn making decisions in real time.
“Today’s livestock producers may be taught a lot of things to look at, but stockmanship goes a little deeper than just acquiring knowledge,” he says.
For those who have had the privilege of working alongside Forkner, his induction into the “who’s who” of the livestock industry came as no surprise. Although few portraits of hog breeders hang in this gallery that originated from the cattle industry in 1903, the ones that do represent true stockman and change agents in the pork industry.
Everett Forkner's portrait by artist Richard Halstead
A Progression of Change
When Forkner picked out his Duroc barrow for the Little International during his freshman year at the University of Missouri, little did he realize how the trajectory of his life was about to change. He grew up on a small diversified livestock operation in southwest Missouri that fed out a few feeder pigs and had some Polled Hereford cattle.
He didn’t know much about pigs, but at that pivotal moment in his life – he took a risk to try something new. And that risk paid off.
Not only did he do well with his pig in showmanship, but he also won the livestock judging contest and earned the overall champion title. That experience kick-started his future raising purebred pigs and advocating for the U.S. pork industry around the world.
“He’s a smart guy,” said his long-time friend and college buddy Norm Braksik during the Saddle & Sirloin celebration. “You just knew he was going to be successful in whatever he did.”
Exhibiting Duroc breeding stock at the Missouri State Fair opened many doors for Everett Forkner as he started out in the pork industry.
Purebreds and Production Sales
After graduation, Forkner says he had to hit the ground running. After all, he had just invested in 10 sows, not to mention he had a wife, a son and another child on the way to think about. He and his wife Ruby of 62 years spent their first chapter in the pork industry focusing on building their herd of Durocs, Truline Genetics, LLC, from the ground up.
“We immediately jumped into the test station era, which started about that time,” he recalls. “For the first time, we were looking at real performance of pigs fed in like situations under a common management system and common housing.”
He entered his first purebred Duroc litters into the boar test station at the University of Missouri for evaluation and enrolled in a meat certification program. He also began exhibiting pigs at the Missouri State Fair. In fact, his Grand Champion Duroc Boar at the Missouri State Fair in 1965 led off his first production sale later that year at $2,600.
Over time, one sale become two sales and two sales became four. During that era, the Forkners hosted 99 production sales at the farm.
“The highlight of this period was selling the world-record selling Duroc Boar at the National Barrow Show in 1973 for $38,000,” Forkner says. “We were able to retain him back in our herd while he was in quarantine getting ready to be sent overseas to Soga-No-Yo Swine Farms in Hiratsuka, Japan. That really helped us because we ended up buying the Champion Duroc Gilt at the National Barrow Show. I pulled out all the stops and bred the NBS champion boar to the champion gilt.”
As a result of this opportunity, Forkner sold 39 red gilts bred to this boar for $1,025 a head at his production sale.
“Nobody had ever been able to do that before or had attempted to do that before. It was nothing more than circumstances and trying to take advantage of a unique opportunity,” he says.
Introduction of Multiple Breeds
As pig farming continued to evolve, Forkner began hearing more about breeding systems where white pigs made the females and colored pigs made the males in a three-breed rotational cross. To best meet the needs of his customers, he added other breeds of purebred hogs to his operation so he could sell commercial boars into a crossbreeding system.
Not long after that, they moved from total outdoor production into a confinement unit. “A confinement unit with 600 sows moved in north of us – it was huge,” Forkner says. “Nobody had ever built a hog operation with 600 sows. I knew the handwriting was on wall – this was where we were headed.”
This was another pivotal moment in his journey as a hog breeder, he explains. He discovered how a whole breeding system could help him improve by using the inherent female reproduction traits of the white breeds and the carcass quality and growth and efficiency of their colored breeds, primarily Hampshire and Duroc.
“One of the things that helped me be successful was being willing to take a calculated risk and knowing and sensing when the timing was right to make change,” Forkner explains. “Those two things were always in the back of my mind as we grew our operation over the years.”
Everett Forkner sorts through a group of pigs on the farm in Richards, Mo.
Breeding Systems Take Center Stage
Before long, he began to watch smaller independent breeders disappear from the scene as more 500-sow commercial units popped up throughout the country.
“Our next step was putting together a whole breeding system so we could sell all the breeding gilts as well as terminal boars to go on top of that. For a lot of reasons that sold well because it was all one health system,” he says.
With performance data to back it up, he consistently produced females that would perform at a high level and create market hogs that could demand a premium.
But this was the shortest-lived era, he explains. European companies soon began putting in their first multiplier herds in the U.S.
“I remember speaking to a pork producer group, predicting within 10 years we’d not only see more groups like PIC come in, but we’d also see multiplication sites with 1,000 or more sows. Well, it didn’t take long for that to happen. We had a narrow window that we could produce the whole breeding system, but were quickly replaced by European companies that could do it in a much quicker way,” Forkner says.
Focus on Pork Quality and Eating Experience
As science and technology evolved, Forkner looked for ways to carve out a niche for his 500-sow operation. He took a closer look at the consumer’s eating experience and how pork quality, taste and tenderness made a difference. He was also active in the National Swine Registry that was doing a lot of work on certified meat type sires, discerning advantages and disadvantages breed by breed.
And that’s where the operation’s focus remains today – providing a superior product with a superior marketing advantage into upscale restaurants and markets. For the past 15 years, he has been working with an organization in Louisiana that provides high-end restaurants with pork from his farm under the organization’s label.
“That has helped us move forward and do more business around the country, especially the west coast,” he says. Just the other day, he received a call from someone in Texas looking for 100 gilts and Duroc boars to go with those gilts to build a herd to produce meat for upscale restaurants.
“It’s a growing marketplace,” Forkner says.
Truline Genetics, LLC, is a 500-sow nucleus herd of pureline Duroc, Hampshire, Landrace, Large White and Berkshire genetics.
Feedback Leads to Opportunity
When it comes to change, Forkner says you must be receptive to it. He built one of the first wean-to-finish buildings in the Midwest and forged ahead with a new production system weaning pigs at 28 days and moving them directly into wean-to-finish facilities.
“You don’t have to be first person, but you’ve got to be one of the leaders,” Forkner explains. “That’s how we have remained in the pig business and stayed profitable.”
Keep reading to see how a decision Forkner made 12 years ago changed the trajectory of their operation, and learn a few of his "trade secrets."
