Perhaps the most valuable outcome of the package was that it


gave country compounders, such as ourselves, the confidence that their feeds could be fully competitive with those of the nationals, both in performance terms and value for money. While this vision took perhaps twenty years to be fully realised, it effectively altered the structure of the compound feed trade throughout the UK and Ireland, in a way that greatly enhanced the prospects for our family business. Perhaps even more interesting, and equally beneficial to our


Above: The Omagh mill in 1967 following years of major investment


1962, by the installation of bins and control equipment under a contract with the Essex milling engineers, Christy and Norris. Their installer was Roy Howard, in his mid-twenties, whom we


invited to join us as works engineer after completion of the installation. Overall, the investment provided an enhanced level of production together with a reduced manpower requirement, thus achieving a major improvement in productivity.


Feed Formulation During the war and immediate post-war years, standard formulae had been supplied by government, to match the limited supply of locally grown barley and imported cereals and proteins, but by 1950 it was plain that this fairly cosy arrangement was set to change; greater freedom in formulation would lead to a more competitive market, and new diets would have to evolve, both to be fit for the purpose of expanding the livestock production but also to be economically sound. My father and John McAusland were aware


John McAusland


that the formulation of rations for livestock was a matter requiring scientific knowledge that neither of them possessed, so someone of suitable qualification was sought for this purpose. Informal enquiries identified Craig Gamble, B. Agr, who was shortly due to take early retirement from the Ministry of Agriculture, after several years’ experience of diet formulation.


Mr Gamble was hired on a part-time basis which gradually grew


into something approaching a full-time advisory function, both to the mill and to customers feeding our rations. However, there remained a gap between the expertise of the


national and regional compounders and that of country millers such as ourselves. In the early 1960s, this vacuum became obvious to an enterprising duo, Leslie Colborn and Prescott Kerr, who set up a company, Colborn Vitafeeds – allied to Kingsfords, millers in Canterbury – with the explicit aim of selling a combined package to country compounders in both the UK and Ireland. This consisted of vitamin and mineral supplements and a technical advisory service, including feed formulation.


PAGE 26 JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2021 FEED COMPOUNDER


Above: The author Richard Scott pictured in the 1970s in front of the company’s revolutionary Qeleq feed formulation computer


The consequent competitiveness of our company’s feed


formulations provided a significant benefit to our profitability and growth potential.


Location, Location Another major contributory factor, also one that the directors in 1950 could not have foreseen, was the introduction of bulk delivery and on-farm bulk storage of livestock feeds. Our tentative first step was the purchase, from the pioneering English company F.E. Callow, of a bulk delivery lorry in 1962. Unsure as we were of the viability of this investment, the lorry had removable bins fitted so that – if bulk delivery were to prove impractical or unpopular with our customers – it could be used as a flat-bed lorry to deliver feed in sacks. Almost immediately that option proved to be unnecessary. What


we did not fully appreciate, at the outset of the new service, was that our customers would swiftly show their preference for this means of


company, was the development of in-house computer formulation of diets. Given a set of feed requirements, in terms of percentages of necessary nutrients, the economic challenge was for these to be achieved at least cost, given the range and ever-shifting market value of the ingredients that were available. Initially, the equations were calculated by the use of a linear


computer programme, devised by the owner of a small mill in Belfast, William Marshall, with whom I happened to be friendly. He founded a company, Qeleq, to market his inventions, and ours was the third company, after Marshalls and E.T. Green - a subsidiary of Dalgety in later years - to invest in a specialised computer for feed formulation.


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