GLEN ULLIN, ND – The mill in Glen Ullin will soon be making feed.
All Day Trucking, a Jamestown, North Dakota, company, purchased the feed mill that Dakotaland Feeds closed several months ago. Dakotaland had produced feed at one time, but in recent years sold commercial feed.
The mill plans to make feed mixes with pellets for livestock, including cattle, bison and sheep, and is already mixing loose feeds.
Ethan Kaml, a former Dakotaland Feeds employee, is managing The Mill. Kaml, who is originally from Roseau, Minnesota, and was a general construction contractor, got into the feed business after marrying Beth Glasser, whose family raises Black Angus cattle on a farm near Glen Ullin. Kaml learned about food production, trucking and sales in his previous job.
“I really liked the industry,” he said.
Ann Bailey / Agweek
All Day Trucking, which Ben and Darcy Mickelson founded in Jamestown in 2013 with a single truck, bought the feed mill in Glen Ullin because it fits well with the transportation of agricultural byproducts from the trucking business.
All Day Trucking hauls byproducts, including potato waste, as far north as the Canadian border to as far south as South Dakota and east to west from St. Cloud, Minnesota, to Billings, Montana, Ben Mickelson said.
Initially, the trucking company transported a variety of products, until Mickelson found his niche in the transportation of cargo byproducts. He began focusing on by-products when he discovered that customers would substitute by-products for goods that were less expensive than what they had requested but similar in nutritional value.
“It escalated quickly after that,” Mickelson said. After the ethanol plant in nearby Spiritwood, North Dakota began operating, the Mickelsons purchased a live-bottom trailer to transport wet feed.
Ann Bailey / Agweek
The mill fits well with the all-day trucking business.
“We already have trucks and by-products. That’s what will be the key for us,” he said.
The Mill has partnered with Famo Feeds, an animal feed company in Freeport, Minnesota, which will formulate its rations.
“That’s the great part about being with Famo. They’re a great outfit,” Mickelson said. Famo will also supply The Mill with minerals for its feed mixes.
The Mill’s rations will use a variety of commodity by-products, including wheat meat, soybean hull pellets and dry distillers grains, in the feed, which will also include grains and other crops grown by farmers in Morton County.
Ann Bailey / Agweek
“Our caper will be cow cake pellets and beef pellets in many different varieties,” Kaml said. The mill plans to begin production of pelleted products in the coming weeks. The company has the capacity to produce 25 to 30 tons of pelleted food per day, with the aim of increasing this amount.
The food products, which can be packaged in pieces, 50-pound bags or in bulk, will be available to ship nationwide.
The majority of The Mill’s customers will be farmers within a 100-mile radius of Glen Ullin. The closest feed mill to the city is 60 miles away, so the business will fill a need for area farmers, Kaml said.
“We’re right in the middle here,” he said.
