ST. HENRY, Ohio (February 21, 2024) -- Cooper Farms -- a family-owned and -operated, vertically integrated farm -- now offers human-grade turkey ingredients for our four-legged friends. The company’s ingredients are sourced from turkeys raised by family farmers who supply Cooper Farms with sustainable sourced protein which pet food manufacturers and their customers have come to demand.
“Cooper Farms’ venture into pet food ingredient sales began about five years ago,” said Lynn DeArmond, New Business Development Manager at Cooper Farms. “We had a major pet food manufacturer contact us looking for someone who would produce ingredients to their specs and almost immediately, we found a niche market other suppliers were not filling with a giblet blend.”
The customer was looking for natural proportions of livers, hearts and gizzards, but could not source gizzards without foreign material. Sales presented the challenge to the Cooper Farms engineering and fabrication team and, within days, the group had designed equipment capable of splitting the gizzard open and cleaning it before it merges with the hearts and livers to be ground into a natural proportion blend.
“Listening to the customer has enabled Cooper Farms to offer some unique products such as bone cake and bone residue,” said DeArmond. “I love to task our research and development department with a customer's request as they’re always up to the challenge.”
Some of the products we currently supply include:
MST - Mechanically Separated Turkey
Gibs (giblets)- hearts and livers
Thigh trim
Boneless, skinless wing meat
Turkey skin
Neck meat
Breast meat
Tendon straps
Product typically leaves Cooper Farms fresh in 2,000 lb. combos. In the rare instance where a customer’s specifications require frozen, Cooper Farms will send it to one of their partner facilities to be frozen before sending on to the customer.
According to DeArmond, Cooper Farms welcomes customers to tour the plant to see how ingredients are produced. We’re wide open to customer’s ideas and often new product concepts are generated by something a customer sees while touring our facility. DeArmond can be reached at lynnd@cooperfarms.com or by phone at 419-203-1246.
DeArmond and the R&D team plan to attend several industry shows including the Petfood Forum in Kansas City (April 29- May 1) and SuperZoo in August in Las Vegas.
