Decades of continuous research utilized to develop feed products

GRAY SUMMIT, Mo. — Researchers have conducted continual animal nutrition research for more than 95 years at the Purina Animal Nutrition Center.

“It’s all about the animal, that’s where we focus,” said Kevin Dill, director of dairy technical innovation at Purina. “We want to figure out how to make that animal’s life better and the owner of those animals livelihood better.”

“In 1894, William H. Danforth wanted to create a company that created purity in agriculture and that’s where we get the name Purina,” said Kevin Kapelski, national farm production consultant leader, during a Media Day at the farm.

Research began in 1916 in downtown St. Louis.

“In 1926, for $500 dollars Danforth purchased a 260-acre dairy farm and some of the original buildings are still here,” Kapelski said. “That was the start of the process for feeding animals to make sure our feed would do what we said it would do.”

The farm has increased in size to 1,200 acres, where researchers work with numerous species, including cattle, hogs, sheep, goats, poultry, rabbits, horses, deer and fish.

“We are very unique to the industry because we are the only facility of our kind anywhere in the world that covers as many species as we do and the depth we do,” said Troy Wistuba, vice president of feed research and development for Purina.

“We have 90-plus people with Ph.D.s and DVMs in the company,” Wistuba said. “There are 20,000-plus nutrition research studies in our library and our company has more than 130 patents.”

This accumulation of research means Purina works with big data.

“We have a database with a little over 6 billion individual data points,” Wistuba said. “No other feed company has units that generate data like we do.”

The Purina nine-square checkerboard pattern is a very recognizable brand.

“The philosophy that Danforth built into the company still draws people today,” Kapelski said. “One of his more enduring legacies is the four-square culture of stand tall, think tall, smile tall and live tall — metaphors for a well-balanced life.”

The company founder also focused on a four-square philosophy for animal husbandry — good feeding, food breeding, proper sanitation and sound management.

“That’s what we were founded on and it still works today,” Kapelski said.

“It is really about innovation, our customers and who they are going to trust with their animals’ nutrition,” he said.

The Purina center includes a 300-cow Holstein dairy herd.

“We have 30 people employed for that herd because that’s what it takes to collect the data points,” Dill said.

“Not only do we do research here, once we develop technologies we have herds spread across the U.S. where we take products and do demos,” Wistuba said. “We collect the information to see if the product works under those environmental conditions.”

Purina develops products for farmers that are feasible, possible and desirable.

“Our technical sales people working in the industry tell us what problems they are facing and what kind of solutions we can provide,” Wistuba said.

“Our key innovation platforms are animal performance and productivity, health and immunity and the evolving customer,” he said.

“The reason we focus on the evolving customer is we have to be able to translate what we’re doing in science to somebody that can use it and get it out to them,” he said. “We try to provide them technologies to assist them in the management of their herds.”

Earlier this year, Purina released a tool to help compare dairy farms.

“Addie allows me to compare my farm with yours in the same format because not everything is defined the same in data sets between farms,” Dill said. “It’s about making decisions that impact the dairy today using insights from the data.”

“To be successful we must move quickly and we must be willing to be 80% right and figure out the rest later,” Wistuba said.

“We develop a product that we have 80% confidence in and we get it out to the folks that can use it in the field,” he said. “Then we determine whether it’s a product that works everywhere or a product that works on a specific type of diet.”

Purina researchers work with constant collaboration.

“We have to lose the fear, defer the judgment and jump in,” Wistuba said.

“We can make a decision today and then find out if it works exactly the way we thought or maybe it works a little different and then we can change what we doing,” he said. “But you can’t get to the second decision unless you make the first one.”