Dennis Gessling and son Cody, 3, look over one of the hog buildings behind his parent's home near Hardeman. Gessling gets hogs in weighing 45-50 pounds and feeds them until they reach approximately 275 pounds. (Marcia Gorrell/Democrat-News) [Click to enlarge] [Order this photo]

Dennis Gessling, a fourth generation Saline County farmer, said that raising pigs has always been his "passion."

"I bought my first set of feeder pigs when I was in 8th grade," he said, explaining he purchased 30 feeder pigs from a neighbor.

As a Slater High School FFA member and with help from his agriculture teacher, Paul Crews, he said he was able to keep expanding his operation.

In fact, he grew enough that he earned the State FFA Degree and the

Missouri FFA Swine Proficiency Award and placed in the top 10 nationally.

After graduating from Slater in 1985, he started farming full time with his parents, Ivan and Gladys, who raised hogs, corn, soybeans, wheat and cattle near the Hardeman and Arrow Rock area.

During his first full-time harvest season, he questioned his career choice a few times.

"That fall it was so wet we were combining from 9 o'clock at night until 5 or 6 o'clock in the morning for the ground to freeze," he said. "I was thinking, 'What have I done?' But I wouldn't change a thing."

His father had started farming and raising hogs after coming back "from the service" in 1963. While Gessling was in grade school and high school they had a farrow-to finish hog operation, keeping all the hogs outside.

"Everything was outside in A-frame huts and dirt lots," he said. "In the wintertime you were bedding them down with straw and sleeping with them all night when they were farrowing," he said.

From there, they continued to grow, buying his parents' part of the sow operation in the late 1980s. He also had hogs in buildings at his grandmother's farm.

But in the 1990's, it was becoming apparent that you had to get "bigger or get out," as it was taking more and more hogs to be able to make a living. Consumers also wanted leaner meat.

"Consumers wanted a lean pork chop or lean bacon and you couldn't have that out on the dirt because a hog needed the fat to keep warm or cool.

You needed to be inside where it was controlled environment," he said.

In 1993, Gessling sold his all his pigs.

"When I finished out, I was at 150 sows farrow-to-finish and I knew I needed to get bigger to justify having the buildings or get out," he said.

"You had to be a pretty decent size to make a living then and I knew it was going to get worse."

A few years later, Tyson foods bought the Wilson packing plant in Marshall and started looking for contract growers in the area. Gessling missed raising pigs.

"I told myself I would never raise hogs (except) for myself, but I tested the water. I wanted to see how it would work," he said.

In 1997, he and his parents decided to build new buildings and raise hogs on contract for Farmland Industries.

Gessling said he got back into the hog business, while others were leaving, because he likes raising hogs, acknowledging that many other farmers don't.

"They're not easy to handle. Try getting them out of a 66-degree barn when it's 10 below outside when the snow is blowing at 4 o'clock in the morning in January or February," he said, explaining they load the animals into the trucks early in the mornings.

He said raising hogs on contract, also meant less risk.

"It was just the way I wanted to go. There is not as much risk involved or time, equipment and labor," he said.

About five years ago, after another company purchased Farmland Industries' hog venture, Gessling started raising hogs for Carthage Veterinary Service of Carthage, Ill.

Currently, he has four buildings behind his parents' house.

"At one time we can have roughly 3,800 head on-site, " explaining they have four buildings, each holding up to 960 hogs.

The pigs come to his buildings weighing 45-50 pounds and he feeds them until they reach about 275 pounds.

"We do a lot of preconditioning for gilt replacement to go back into new farms or added into old farms," he said. "That's what we have been doing a lot of up to this summer."

Once or twice a month, a veterinarian comes to look at the pigs.

"If I see something I'm not familiar with or have questions on, it's a phone call," he said.

When Gessling gets the pigs in, they barns are electronically kept at 72 degrees for two weeks and then lowered a degree a week, until reaching 66 degrees, where they are kept until they are finished.

Gessling said housing the hogs inside is better for everybody, including the pigs and the environment.

"I hate to say it, but they are better taken care of than some of the people in our own country."

In addition to the hogs, Gessling, along with a part-time employee and some help from his father, runs a cowherd and farms several hundred acres of ground where he raises corn, soybeans, wheat and hay.

Gessling lives on the farm that once belonged to his grandparents, with his wife Chrissy, son Cody, 2, and stepsons John, 14, and Chris, 15.

Chrissy teaches 3rd and 4th grade, as well as special education at Hardeman School. She also helps on the farm doing everything from driving a tractor working ground in planting season to driving a grain cart in the fall.

Chrissy grew up on a farm in the Brunswick and Keytesville area where her grandparents and dad both had large hog operations.

"The goal is to for her to be able quit teaching and stay home and be able to farm with me," he said. "She has the same passion and drive I do."

Gessling started looking for a way to expand so that Chrissy and hopefully one day, his son or stepsons could join the operation.

"I've always wanted to expand. I've had dreams since I was in high school of raising hogs and raising a family."

Gessling looked at several locations he owned to build two modern hog buildings that would hold 2,400 hogs each.

He was unable to expand at his parents' site due to Department of Natural Resource regulations. The other sites he looked at were ruled out because they were too close to other existing hog operations and would violate bio-security regulations, in place to keep today's hog herds disease free.

Those sites ruled out included behind his home, where, he said, he would have put the new buildings, "in a heartbeat."

The only site that matched all of the criteria was on a 135-acre farm Gessling has owned for about 10 years.

"Our last option was to go there," he said, of the tree-filled site, two miles from Arrow Rock.

Although Gessling thought he might have "a little resistance" he had no idea the storm of publicity and criticism his application for a Class IC confined animal feeding operation would bring.

"I expected some, but nothing of this magnitude," said Gessling.