Plans changed en route upon learning that the farm was no longer for sale. In 1989, Her was offered a job at Kraft Foods.įirmly believing that he would retire with Kraft, Her was surprised when he received a call in February 2005 from a cousin who was curious if Her had ever considered going into poultry farming.Īfter some consideration, Her and his family began a Memorial Day road trip to North Carolina with intentions of purchasing a poultry farm. His family later moved to Wisconsin.įor several years, Her picked up work in housekeeping and auto shops, learning English on the job and through English as a Second Language classes. In 1978, Her’s uncle, a Christian Mission Ally, helped Her and his family escape to Thailand where they stayed until moving to Ottawa, Illinois. “We lived off of the jungle, but the jungle isn’t a good place for farming. “Once we moved into the jungle, we cut off all connection with the outside world until 1978,” Her said. As American troops began pulling out of the country in 1975, Her said he and his family were forced into hiding in the remote, mountainous jungles of Laos. During the Vietnam War, Her said his father, a soldier, fought alongside the United States.
Since beginning his Class 1 poultry operation in 2005, Her has raised chickens for local commercial poultry operator, Simmons.īorn in Laos in 1960, Her was raised in a Hmong farming community. He walks three miles a day through his 500-foot and 600-foot houses checking on the chickens that help provide for his family. Her houses 235,000 broilers, or meat chickens, in six poultry houses in the small town of Noel, Missouri, located just six miles northeast of where Missouri, Arkansas and Oklahoma intersect. But that’s never been my way of doing things.” “My cousin always told me to do my research before getting into something new. “I’ve learned a lot by mistake,” said Her, a soft-spoken member of the Hmong community. Everything he knows about poultry farming he learned over two weeks with the farm’s previous owner and nine years of on the job trial-and-error. Hmong farmer overcomes adversity in Laos, makes the most of American opportunities
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