Photo by Sally Y. Hart

Livestock of all kinds is fairly common throughout southeast Iowa, but when you go to Wayland you’ll find an abundance of farms devoted to a certain kind of livestock: turkeys. The turkey farms in Wayland, along with a few around Kalona and Washington, produce around 1.5 million turkeys every year. There are many reasons why Wayland has become a sort of turkey farm hotbed, the first of which is family history. Jared Achen is a third-generation turkey farmer, and he says, “There’s a lot of generations of family turkey farmers in this area. A lot of knowledge base in the Wayland area. We have a feed mill here in Wayland that feeds a lot of the turkeys in this area. And we are also only an hour away from our processing plant.”

Additionally, Achen says the moderate temperatures in southeast Iowa are good for turkey production, though they do have to fight through humidity during the summer. Wayland was also largely spared from the outbreak of Avian Influenza, or bird flu, that affected poultry farms across the nation two years ago. Achen is hopeful his own children will one day take over the turkey farm from him. To hear more about turkey farming in Wayland, listen to the Agriculture Magazine interview with Achen.