“We deliver the male.” No, I’m not referring to the U.S. Postal Service.
In this case, it refers to a business that delivers selected male genetics to pork production operations across the Midwest. This same innovative farm family is also pursuing blockchain and bitcoin mining from its location in rural Kansas.
Lannin Zoltenko is president and managing partner at Zoltenko Farms and Wildcat Blockchain. His family’s farm is in Jewell County, just one mile from the Nebraska state line. Five generations of the family have lived here. The farm became a century farm in 2017.
Zoltenko’s folks are James and Sherryl Zoltenko. Lannin and his wife Melanie have two boys: Chandler, who is farming, and Taran who is at Kansas State University, which is also her father’s alma mater.
For decades, the Zoltenkos had a traditional diversified livestock farm raising cattle, crops and pigs. The hog operation was farrow-to-finish, meaning that the males (boars) were bred to the females (sows), which gave birth to piglets that were then raised to market weight.
In 1997, Zoltenko was considering whether to come back to the farm. His parents were trying to decide whether to retire or expand.
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