March 2013

April 1st is John W. Holt’s birthday anniversary, our Des Moines Feed Co. founder. He’d always say with a grin, “I’m the biggest April fool my mother had!” An honest man of solid integrity, with a big heart.

The government has finally compiled their final figure for the 2012 Sunflower crop. Production was 1,395,000 tons, up 37% from the 2011 crop. Everyone remember a couple years ago when Oil Sunflower was around $30 for a 50# bag wholesale? So far, sunflower price has been fairly stable. In the long term, prices could go up because the food industry is turning more towards using non-GMO oils in their processing. That pretty well rules out soy, cottonseed, canola, and corn oils. Conscientious consumers are reading the labels.

The USA is the world’s second largest pork producer (China’s first) of which 27% is exported. Speaking of exports, the US will be shipping out 1.5 million tons of tree nuts to China and the Orient this year, up 15% from last year. No wonder we can hardly find-much more buy-tree nuts for our gourmet bird feeds!

The male Gold Finches are beginning to get their beautiful summer feathers. Comments are coming back to us that the re-cleaned Niger Seed and the Audubon Brand Niger & Hearts are really doing a wonderful job of attracting the finches. Both are run over our cleaners to remove (as much as possible) dirt, sand, weed seed, and the brown immature Niger Seed., as well as scalp off the chunks, strings, sticks, and stems. We can’t clean it all off, but enough to call it 99.5% pure! Since India is about the only player in the game, Niger Seed price has tightened up a bit.

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