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Sen. Ernst visits Hoover’s Hatchery in Rudd

  • Tony Halsted, director of business development, left, and Luke Weiss, CFO of Hoover's Hatchery in Rudd, give a tour Friday morning to U.S. Sen. Joni Ernst.

  • Sen. Joni Ernst looks at many different varieties of chicks during a visit to Hoover's Hatchery Friday morning in Rudd. Press photo by Bob Steenson

  • Brendan Conley, left, Iowa communication director for Sen. Joni Ernst, is encouraged to pick up a chick at Hoover's Hatchery in Rudd by Sen. Ernst and Tony Halsted, Hoover's director of business development. Press photo by Bob Steenson

  • Mary Halsted, who took over ownership of Hoover's Hatchery in 1977 with her husband, Doug, talks about all the changes that have occurred through the years. Doug died in 2002, and Mary sold majority ownership in the company in 2015. She continues to serve as an advisor to the company. Press photo by Bob Steenson

  • Tony Halsted, director of business development, left, and Luke Weiss, CFO of Hoover's Hatchery in Rudd, give a tour Friday morning to U.S. Sen. Joni Ernst. Press photo by Bob Steenson

  • Brendan Conley, left, Iowa communication director for Sen. Joni Ernst, is encouraged to pick up a chick at Hoover's Hatchery in Rudd by Sen. Ernst and Tony Halsted, Hoover's director of business development. Press photo by Bob Steenson

By Bob Steenson, bsteenson@charlescitypress.com

Sen. Joni Ernst got a tour of Hoover’s Hatchery in Rudd Friday morning, got a chance to hold some baby chicks and answered a couple of questions about current events.

Ernst, the junior U.S. senator from Iowa, said the visit was her Floyd County stop as part of her goal to visit each of the 99 counties in the state each year.

Tony Halsted, director of business development at the hatchery, said Ernst’s visit was important because it gave them an opportunity to show her what they do and tell her what the impact is of the decisions that are made in Washington.

“There was a lot of discussion back and forth on what needs to be done,” he said.

“We don’t look at sides to take on the issues, but we’re just looking for help to promote our business, help our business — I think in the end to help agriculture in Iowa,” Halsted said.

“We know that Joni plays a large part in that — in the decisions — in her role. But also with an agriculture background, it’s important for her to see and for her to spread the word,” he said.

Ernst called the visit “a pretty phenomenal experience — just understanding the entire process going from obtaining the eggs, into the incubator, into the hatchery and so forth.”

The Republican senator said there is a concern about getting agriculture and knowledge about agriculture back into communities, and one way to do that is through the growing popularity of backyard chickens.

“We talked through that today, on a lot of hobbyists out there who are raising these birds and it’s really exciting for the community,” she said.

Luke Weiss, CFO of Hoover’s Hatchery, told Ernst that this is really the slow time of year for the business, setting “only” about 80,000 eggs a week for hatching.

“Our busy season really starts in February, and it goes through April, but we’re still pretty busy in May, June, July and August, but then the fourth quarter would be when we really slow down,” Weiss said. “In the busy season we’re setting around 550,000 eggs a week.”

In addition to chickens, the company sells ducks, geese, turkeys, pheasants, guineas and quail.

Weiss said the hatchery gets its eggs from about 50 farms, mostly Amish or Mennonite, that produce their breeding stock in two different areas of Iowa and in southern Missouri.

Halsted said it’s a model that his mother and father, Mary and Doug Halsted, came up with when they took over the hatchery as owners in 1977.

“We support their families and they support us and it’s really good,” Halsted said. The hatchery owns the genetics of the birds but doesn’t own the farms that produce the eggs.

“We really work hard with those farmers to make sure they’re doing it the way that we want it managed and that we’re supporting them and they benefit,” he said.

He also said it’s beneficial to have the farms spread out geographically to protect the business from avian diseases or other catastrophes.

Weiss agreed.

“We’re a rare breed chicken hatchery that has 80-plus different breeds of chickens and that’s really unusual. If we lost some of these, some of them you just can’t go out and buy replacements,” Weiss said.

Weiss said the business continues to grow. It expanded to add incubators in 2016 and is replacing some of the old incubators this season. It opened a large order processing and fulfillment center in January.

Ernst took a few questions from the press at the end of the visit.

Regarding the announcement earlier in the day of a potential agreement on ethanol requirements, Ernst said she and Sen. Charles Grassley, along with Gov. Kim Reynolds, had been working with the president and with members of his cabinet to find a way to make sure that renewable fuel standard (RFS) requirements are met regarding the use of ethanol and biodiesel.

Congress has set levels of renewable fuels that must be blended into the fuel supply, but the administration has been giving RFS waivers to many refineries. The waivers were designed for small refineries that would suffer a hardship to meet the requirements, but many of the refineries that have received the waivers are owned by large, profitable companies.

Ernst said the proposal that was announced Friday morning looked like a path forward to meeting the RFS requirements by redistributing some of the waived gallons to larger refineries.

“We’re very supportive of it,” she said.

On the issue of the impeachment investigation currently underway in the House of Representatives, Ernst said, “The House Democrats have been talking impeachment of the president since November of 2016” when he was elected.

She said the House will do whatever it needs to do, but then the Senate will “sort through all this information and in a very bipartisan manner, a very thoughtful process, they will evaluate the information, potentially talk with those witnesses and make the determination from there.”

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