Cooper Farms, a farm-owned and -operated, vertically integrated farm based in Ohio, now offers human-grade turkey ingredients for pet food.
The company’s ingredients come from turkeys raised by family farmers who supply Cooper Farms with sustainably sourced protein, which pet food manufacturers and their customers demand, said Lynn DeArmond, new business development manager.
“Cooper Farms’ venture into selling pet food ingredients began about five years ago,” DeArmond said. “We had a major pet food manufacturer contact us looking for someone to produce ingredients to their specs and almost immediately, we found a niche market that was not being filled by other pet food suppliers. a mixture of giblets.”
Unique products from custom-designed equipment
The customer is looking for natural proportions of livers, hearts and gizzards, but gizzards cannot be sourced without foreign material. Sales presented the challenge to Cooper Farms’ engineering and fabrication team and within days, the group designed equipment capable of splitting the gizzard open and cleaning it before it joined the hearts and livers for crushing. in a natural blend of proportions.
“Listening to the customer has allowed Cooper Farms to offer some unique products like bone cake and bone residue,” DeArmond said. “I like to assign a customer’s request to our research and development department because they always meet the challenge.”
Products available now include:
- Mechanically separated turkey (MST)
- Gibs (giblets) — heart and liver
- Thigh cut
- Boneless, skinless wing meat
- Turkey skin
- neck meat
- breast meat
- Tendon straps
Produce typically leaves Cooper Farms fresh in 2,000-pound combos. If a customer’s details require frozen, Cooper Farms will send it to a partner facility to be frozen before shipping to the customer.
