Feet on the Ground, Hand in the Business

by Bob Strong, Editor

Moisture control of grain
That’s the way Dou Pienaar described their operations in South Africa. In a letter to Dr. Sprague, Dou said, “I read your article regarding ‘Grain Moisture Control’ in the Feed-lot Magazine of March/April 2004, and found it very interesting.” Dou and his cattle manager, Wimpie Anandale, visited America in July and specifically several feedlots on the High Plains.

Their company is called Crafcor Farming Ltd. They are a vertically integrated Agri business in the Kwa-Zulu Natal Province in the Republic of South Africa (RSA). According to Dou, they turn over about a 120 million (U.S. dollars) each year, feed 25 to 40,000 thousand cattle in two feedlots and employ 600 people in the group. They own the biggest abattoir (processing plant) in the RSA and do value adding of their meat products themselves. They also trade and distribute their own products throughout the RSA. They recently started a lamb finishing feedlot.

They have traditionally feed “chop” (a by-product of corn maize milling) and wheat by-products in South Africa. These types of feed are now less available according to them than it used to be and they’re forced to feed corn. Due to the fact that this now looks like a permanent feature of their feeding regime they have had to look at adding value to the corn in the feeding process. To this end, the moisture management system looks good. They requested to visit one or more feedlots where grain moisture management was in use.

We visited Pratt Feeders west of Pratt Kansas and Ford County Feeders at Ford Kansas east of Dodge City with the RSA visitors. Both of these feedlots use automated moisture control systems in their mills to treat the grain before it is rolled. This produces a good looking flake. ©