POUL 5020 | alexadornato

Writing Assignment 1

Before I came to Auburn, I really didn’t know anything about the feed industry. I just picked up bags of chicken feed from Tractor Supply not really thinking about where the feed came from or the industry/technology behind it. This view didn’t change much until I went on my internship. There, I visited lots of broiler and broiler breeder farms and got a sense for the massive amount of feed a complex goes through on a weekly basis, not to mention monthly or yearly. My understanding was really changed when I got to tour the feed mill on my internship and got to see how industrialized a feed mill really can be. While touring a feed mill, however, one can lose a sense of exactly how important and sensitive the product that a feed mill makes is; food. This was reminded to me during Dr. Dozier’s class, poultry feeding. He reminded me that the product that a feed mill pushes out the door is not just an amorphous mass of ground up stuff. Chicken feed is (supposed to be) a finely tuned, precisely refined mixture or nutrients designed to give the birds the best chance possible to perform to the best of their abilities.

A one day tour of a feed mill hardly does the machinery and processes of a feed mill justice. I found this out when I started Dr. Starkey’s feed manufacturing class when learned about all of the mechanical options that a feed mill can choose from and the pros and cons of each. Dr. Starkey’s class also started teaching me something very important; the feed industry isn’t just limited to chickens. Up until this point, I had only learned about the feed industry through the lens of chickens. Dr. Starkey taught me that there are many other species that the feed industry caters to, all of which have different nutritional and qualitative requirements. For example, turkeys need feed with a much higher pellet quality than chickens because their large beaks can’t handle fines like chickens can. Ducks require a very high PDI with their pellets. Cats and dogs, they are a whole other story. Before this class, I had not even considered the pet food industry. I hadn’t realized how large it is, how much we compete with them for resources, and how much they help us out by purchasing poultry byproduct meal at a premium price. I knew that pet owners were crazy about their pets, but I didn’t know that this extended to the pet food industry in that they have some extreme quality requirements for their product.

This brings me to IPPE. I’ll admit, I did not have a ton of time to walk around and learn a lot about the feed industry at IPPE, but I did learn a few things. I got to interview with a representative from Seaboard Foods (who was interviewing exclusively for hog operations) and I got to talk to her about the operation of their feed mills. It was interesting to hear about how, in the hog operations, the feed mills tend to do their own thing whereas in poultry, the feed mill is very closely integrated with the rest of the operation. I also noticed one thing in the poultry industry that Dr. Starkey warned us about; feed mills are not the poultry industry’s top priority. When I submitted my resume for IPPE, I wrote under the goal of my resume that I wanted to get a job in processing or feed milling. At all four companies that I interviewed with, even the hog people at Seaboard Foods, I was shoehorned into the processing side. This gave me a better understanding as to why some poultry feed mills tend to struggle; they aren’t given priority. I also got to glance through the feed milling hall at IPPE, and I was amazed at the variety of machinery and feed ingredients that were available.

After all of these experiences, I see the feed industry as much more than just a bag of chicken feed at Tractor Supply. I see it as a large, diverse, technical, and scientific industry that is vital for feeding animals everywhere. Though they may usually be put on the back burner, they always seem to come through for us.