Western North Dakota feed plant back in business

GLEN ULLIN, N.D. — The Mill in Glen Ullin soon will be manufacturing feed.

All Day Trucking, a Jamestown, North Dakota, company purchased the feed mill, which Dakotaland Feeds closed several months ago. Dakotaland had manufactured feed at one time, but for the past few years sold commercial feed.

The Mill plans to make custom pelleted feed mixes for livestock, including cattle, bison and sheep, and already is mixing loose feeds.

Ethan Kaml, a former Dakotaland Feeds employee, is managing The Mill. Kaml, who originally is from Roseau, Minnesota, and was a construction general contractor, got into the feed business after he married Beth Glasser, whose family raises black Angus cattle on a ranch near Glen Ullin. Kaml learned about feed manufacturing, trucking and sales at his previous job.

"I really enjoyed the industry," he said.

All Day Trucking, which Ben and Darcy Mickelson founded in Jamestown in 2013 with a single truck, purchased the feed mill in Glen Ullin because it fits well with the trucking business's transportation of agricultural by-products.

All Day Trucking hauls by-products, including potato waste, as far north as the Canadian border to as far south as southern South Dakota and east to west from St. Cloud, Minnesota, to Billings, Montana, said Ben Mickelson.

Initially, the trucking company hauled a variety of products, until Mickelson found his niche in transporting commodity by-products. He started focusing on the by-products when he found customers would substitute commodity by-products that were less expensive than the ones 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 operation, the Mickelsons bought a live bottom trailer to haul wet feed.

The Mill fits in well with the All Day Trucking business.

"We already have the trucks and byproducts. That's what is going to be key to 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 big part of being with Famo. They’re an awesome outfit," Mickelson said. Famo also will supply The Mill with the minerals for its feed mixtures.

The Mill's rations will use a variety of commodity by-products, including wheat midds, soy hull pellets and dried distillers grain, in the feed, which also will incorporate grain and row crops grown by farmers in Morton County.

"Our niche will be cow cake pellets and calf pellets in a lot of different varieties," Kaml said. The Mill plans to begin manufacturing the pelleted products in the next few weeks. The company has the capacity to produce 25 to 30 tons of pelleted feed per day, with a goal to increase that amount.

The feed products, which can be packed in totes, 50-pound bags or bulk will be available to ship nationwide.

The bulk of The Mill's customers will be ranchers within a 100-mile radius of Glen Ullin. The nearest feed mill to the town is 60 miles away, so the business will fill a need for area ranchers, Kaml said.

"We’re right in the middle here," he said.

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