The new 350-tpd feed mill not far from Interstate 29 on the outskirts of Watertown, SD is the property of a feed company that has undergone several transformations.  When it started up in 1976, McFleeg Feeds of South Dakota was strictly an animal nutrition company. The company formulated swine and poultry feeds, had them toll-milled wherever it could, and distributed the feed to customers. (“McFleeg” is a  combination taken from the last names of the company’s two founders – Dr. Richard McCullough and Boyd Fleeger – says Feed Mill Manager Harlan Eickholt.) To gain better control of its products, McFleeg purchased and upgraded a feed mill in Bowdle, SD, a Missouri River town in the north-central part of the state. That mill was destroyed in a fire in 1997. The company went back to toll milling after that, but it wasn’t a satisfactory solution. “We looked at our available options,” Eickholt says. “Only a limited number of facilities could handle toll milling for us, and there weren’t a lot of facilities available for sale or lease. We wanted to take control of our own destiny, so that meant building a new mill.” It also meant a relocation. Bowdle is in the middle of beef cattle country, but most of McFleeg’s customers were in the eastern part of the state. So the company obtained a parcel of land on the edge of Watertown. In January 2004, McFleeg Feeds broke ground on the new mill, with EBM Construction Inc., Norfolk, NE (800-356-9782), a relative newcomer to turnkey feed mill construction. “EBM has been in the feed mill repair and renovation business for a long time,” Eickholt comments. “They’ve had a lot of opportunity to observe mills and equipment and figure out how they’d improve it. We looked at designs from three different bidders, and EBM’s fit our needs the best.” McFleeg began manufacturing feed at its new mill in mid-November. Read the full article