Animal Feeds
Most of the animals to be fed in agriculture eat vegetation hence most animal feeds are vegetable based. Farmers would use the waste products from their products to feed their animals, such as the tops cut from sugar beet before sending them to the factory, and would grow crops such as mangolds and hay to see them through the winter.
In the mid 19th century a process called 'ensilage' was developed, initially in France. In essence green crops are packed into a container and allowed to ferment (back then it was a trench, covered with planks and a layer of earth). This then produces an animal feed, however in Britain it all went a bit wrong when an expert recommended using 'mature herbage' and a resulting high temperature. This method actually reduced the food value and farmers soon gave up on it and went back to using hay. The French exported the idea to America, where corn proved to work particularly well, and the tower silo was developed to serve the process. These were of 25-50 diameter and held over 100 tons of 'silage'. The tower silo was then introduced into Britain in the 1930s. Subsequent development of the process, particularly in Britain, involved using a mix of crops, typically oats or barley mixed with something like peas, beans or vetches. My father remembered visiting a new silo at a farm in Anglesey in the mid 1930s which was made from rings of concrete stacked on top of each other. By the 1960s metal silos were in use, the picture below is from an advert in a 1961 farming magazine. By this time firms such as Pan Britannica Industries, trading as PBI Chemicals, were offering stuff to go into the silo to improve the product, in this case 'Kylage' (which, according to the advert, was 'good for silage').
Fig ___ Farm silo
After the Second World War there was a renewed interest in the actual processes and it was noted that Dutch farmers, acknowledged leaders in grassland management, were using simple open piles of hay (called clamps) with some success. The big one-off tower silos then became less fashionable as smaller, simple designs of silo were introduced.
The foregoing were all included here as they all represent 'manufactured' animal feed, rather than just the hay and other crops provided for winter feed. The commercial animal feed producers probably produced more actual feed than all the individual farmers, usually in combination with another related industry such as flour milling or seed crushing.
The waste products of the farm, such as the beet tops, were seldom enough to feed the animals through the winters so the farmer had to use a part of his land for winter feeds, by buying in additional feed he could use the land for more crops or grazing. The farm-produced winter feeds could also be improved by adding supplements, and a calf could be fed on a special food to allow its mum to resume normal milk production. Purchased foods could also be augmented with other nutrients to improve milk yields. The examples below, from the 1950s, were intended to provide supplements (right) and to allow a milk cow to resume milk production by feeding her calf (left). Incidentally 'whey' is a waste product of milk production (see also Lineside Industries - Milk - Creameries and Dairies and other milk related industrial premises).
Fig ___ Supplementary feeds
Commercial cattle feed was sold in 'two bushel bags' (sacks), which are the equivalent of 16 gallons, roughly 2 cu ft or about 60 litres. By the 1940s many of the sacks used were multi-wall paper and by the later 1970s plastic was being used. The example shown below is courtesy and copyright 'Rusty Hinge', a regular on the uk.rec.sheds newsgroup.
Fig ___ Plastic animal feed sack
The standard measure changed at some point from size to weight, the norm after World War Two being a 56lb multi-wall paper bag (or 25Kg after metrication was introduced), which is slightly smaller than a two bushel bag in the case of animal feeds. Flour weighed in at about a hundredweight in a 2 bushel bag (the figure used for shipping bulk flour by sea is close to 56lb per cubic foot) but the flour mills standard flour bag weighed in at 280 lbs (I believe this was a standard four bushel bag). As the flour mills used the larger standard bag for the bulk of their product it seems likely they also used it for the supplies of residual 'wheatfeed' they passed to the animal feed manufacturers. See also 'Appendix One - Packaging Materials & Containers' for more on sack and bag sizes and weights.
A lot of the source material for commercially manufactured animal feed is a waste product from another industry, such as flour milling (discussed above) or 'seed crushing' and sugar refineries. Seed crushing works at the docks processed various vegetable seeds to recover the oils they contain (see also 'Lineside Industries - Industries associated with docks'). The residual fibrous material (they called it 'oilseed cake') is a rich source of protein and was sold as a feed for all types of animals. The British sugar beet industry sold the residue from the sugar beet to the animal feed firms, first they mixed it with some molasses (which contains some useful nutrients) and supplied it in sacks (they called it Animal Feed Shreds). The animal feed firms also recycled the residue from flour milling (wheatfeed) which they mixed with the oilseed 'cake' (as noted above the large flour mills tended to be in the docks). From the 1890s other ingredients were added to make 'compound' animal foods. The output from the 'cake mill' was blocks of compressed feed to be sold to farmers. Some was also made into pellets, sold in hessian sacks, I think that started in the 1890s with the development of 'compound feeds', by the 1930s most feed was supplied in sacks.
At the country station the feed merchants often had a small raised warehouse (typically a large wooden but lockable shed) with a large door opening onto the siding. Most feed was supplied by rail well into the 1960s and many feed merchants still have Station Road in their address. This building would be adorned with advertising for their products as the farmers also used the station yard for sending out their produce and receiving consignments of supplies.
Fig ___ Animal feed merchant's stores in a goods yard
On the sketch I have suggested adding a narrow platform on the rail side of the building (about three feet wide), this would be standard on a GWR or SR line as these companies used hinged door vans. The LMS and LNER preferred sliding door vans and the platforms were often not added to buildings on those lines. If a GWR or SR van arrived it would be moved clear of the building by men or horses, the doors opened and secured and the van moved back into position. This saves you nearly a half inch of depth, which can be significant in a tight space.
The big firms operating from the docks probably accounted for most of the animal feeds produced from the end of the 19th century but there were many smaller firms operating in country areas, usually reprocessing the waste from the local flour mills. Originally these had been wind mills and water mills but a number of the latter changed to steam power in the later 19th century. These feed mills were closely associated with and often part of a flour mill. Although small compared to the big port facilities a lot of these mills had a railway siding run onto the premises (up to the 1930s this was the most practical distribution channel for distances of more than a few miles).
They seem to have had no distinguishing features for an animal feed mill, they were just rather large 'flour mill' style buildings, however whereas flour mills seldom had a railway siding many flour and feed or plain feed mills did have one. For an illustration of a typical large water powered flour mill see also Appendix One - Engines and Prime Movers. A number of the mills were converted to steam power in the 19th century, but some continued using water power into the 20th century and at least one into the very early 21st Century.
The sketch below shows an actual provender mill, now converted into a home. I have 'back dated' it to show what I think was its original appearance. The structure on the front of the building is the sack hoist. Notice how uneven the ground is around the mill.
Fig ___ Country Provender Mill
A single building this size, although pretty large, looks slightly out of place on its own siding, adding a couple more sturctures makes a big difference, add a two storey 'stores' and a couple of single storey sheds and its not just a mill it's a 'works'.
The sketch below is a composite with elements from a number of larger mills, the basic layout of the buildings and track are from a Scottish late 18th century mill, subsequently served by a siding from the North British Railway. The building on the left is loosely based on another Scottish mill, that on the right is from a photo of an English mill, as is the sign on the end of the main building. The covered road vehicle loading bay on the right is from a later 20th century farm feed establishment, although it looked like it had been there some time. The entire complex as shown is larger than the prototypes on which it is based, but this allows for more rolling stock on the siding.
Fig ___ Country animal feed mill
You can reduce the size quite a lot and retain the look of the thing. One option would be to run the mill race (feeding the water wheel) under the end of the building, internal water wheels were probably less common but it saves you the job of modelling the wheels. You still need the sluice gates for the by-pass however.
Inwards traffic would be flour waste, the residue from sugar beet processing and also used hops, yeast (in bags, called 'barm' in the trade) and 'spent grain' from a brewery. I believe the 'wheatfeed' from the flour mills was shipped in sacks (where the mill was not part of a flour mill) but the spent grain was (I believe) shipped in bulk in sheeted open wagons. By the 1960s BR were using sheeted iron ore hoppers (of the type offered as a kit by the N Gauge Society) for this occasional traffic.
Fig ___ Sheeted hopper delivering spent grain
For hopper deliveries you would need to add a discharge pit (just the wooden covering between the tracks would serve) and some means of transferring the grain to the building on the left, probably the simplest would be an auger feeding a bucket-chain elevator built onto the side of the mill building.
The animal feeds factories also brought in tanker loads of molasses (from the tanks of imported molasses and sugar refineries at the docks or from the sugar beet refineries inland) for processing and adding to some of their foods. This could be delivered either in rail tanks owned by United Molasses or in the feed company tanks. United Molasses owned a fleet of unfitted rail tanks from the 1930s (possibly earlier) to the 1970s. These were replaced by larger vacuum braked tanks they hired in (but they carried the UM brand). After TOPS came in (1974) these red tanks had their ends painted blue as shown below and remained in use into the 1980s (possibly later).
Fig ___ United Molasses tankers
In the 1960s a new approach was taken by the big animal feed firms, using more home grown plants and mills located closer to the customers in the country (these mills were much smaller than those in the docks and catered to a 70 mile radius or thereabouts). The first of these 'country' plants opened at Winsford in Cheshire, able to supply the industries on the coast and the farmers inland using short distance road haulage. The mills at the docks were then run down into the 1980s, then in the mid 1980s there was a change in agriculture policy and demand slumped, leading to a major retrenchment in the industry and the close of both dockside mills and some of the newer country mills.
Animal Feeds Manufacturers
Smaller country firms producing only animal feeds would not operate their own rail tankers (although these might be seen bringing in molasses and possibly fuel oil), but they might have a branded vans. I haven't managed to trace much information on these firms as yet, there seems to be little archive material in the library system. The buildings were often branded and marked on maps as 'provender mills' or more recently 'feed mills' and these mills were often closely associated with, if not part of, flour mills. As noted above these firms also used the 'spent grain' from the breweries as part of the mix, shipped in BR owned sheeted hoppers by the later 1950s.
BOCM
British Oil and Cake Mills was formed in 1899 when several seed crushing firms joined together, however the individual mills continued to trade under their existing names. In 1907 BOCM introduced the first hen feed (based on imported American corn) called Eggemon, the adverts showed this as 'Egg em on'. In 1926 BOCM was taken over by Lever Bros, but the existing trade names continued in use.
Major BOCM connected works were found at Manchester, Renfrew, Erith, Hull, Avonmouth and Selby. BOCM in the Green Diesel era of BR used stick-on labels (actually they were plain paper pasted onto the sides of the vans). The examples shown are all from photographs, I believe they were red as BOCM paid extra to have a coloured label on their black and white magazine ads in the 1950s, but I cannot be sure the wagon labels were so coloured. As well as the logo label they often added a simple rectangle with the name of the feed type (eg Kositos) pasted on close by.
Fig ___ BOCM labels used on railway vans
As dealers in oils the BOCM group of seed crushing mills operated several rail tank wagons, many carrying the livery of owning seed mill (see also 'Lineside Industries - Industries associated with docks'), by the 1950s some had been re-liveried for BOCM, I believe they just added a letter in front of the wagon number to indicate its 'home' mill (M for Manchester, S for Selby etc), however details of this livery are hard to find. At times these were probably used to bring in molasses for the feed side of the business. The sketches below show what I believe was the livery used by the Avonmouth tanks in the 1950s, both variants co-existed. They are based on information from Mr Tourret's book on Petroleum Tanks Wagons of Great Britain, any errors are mine. The logo on the right is the standard BOCM company logo.
Fig ___ BOCM Bristol tanks and Logo
In 1969 BOCM & Silcock Lever Feeds merged to form BOCM Silcock Ltd BOCM but the plain BOCM logo remained in use. In 1992 Unilever sold BOCM Silcock to merge with Pauls Agriculture to form BOCM PAULS LTD.
Fig ___ BOCM Silcocks and BOCM Pauls logos
R & W Paul Limited (trading as Pauls of Ipswitch)
This company was founded in Ipswich in the early nineteenth century initially as a brewery but later to trade in malt and barley for brewers. Expansion in malting was matched by diversification into the manufacture of animal feedstuffs and flaked maize for brewers, initially they supplied horse feeds but by 1900 had branched into other animal feedsuffs. Pauls had some considerable shipping interests, in 1886 they bought a coastal steam cargo ship (the Swift) and by the early 1890s the fleet comprised six steamships, ten 40-50 ton sailing barges, a number of lighters and steam tugs. They imported maize and barley from America and eastern Europe, and exported quantities of malt, barley and smaller quantities of wheat and oats, all via the port of Ipswich. In 1902 the company purchased Gillman and Spencer Ltd of Rotherhithe (manufacturers of flaked maize and brewers' preservatives), where they developed Kositos, a feed for horses, cattle and pigs made from cooked flaked maize (still on the market in 2008). In the 1920s this was advertised on large enamel signs simply as 'Kositos Cooked Maize, Best Animal Feed'. Boal Mill in Kings Lynn was purchased in 1912 and converted for the production of animal foodstuffs. In 1918 the Hull Malt Company, manufacturers of flaked maize, was acquired and converted for milling animal feeds. They continued to expand in the brewery supplies trade, setting up the Albion Sugar Company, producing invert sugars for the brewing trade, in partnership with White, Tomkins and Courage in 1929. The Leeds firm of Richard Dobson and Son was purchased in 1941 and, three years later, the Thetford maltings of James Fison Ltd. The main emphasis was on the animal feeds business however, especially the new growth area of compound feeds. In the early 1930s they built additional mills at the docks in Manchester, Avonmouth, London and Faversham. In February 1963 the company merged with White, Tomkins and Courage of London and the name changed to Pauls and Whites. This had five wholly-owned subsidiaries: Gillman and Spencer; the Albion Sugar Company; White, Tomkins and Courage; Pauls Foods and R and W Paul (Maltsters). In 1967 the company was reorganised into three divisions: malt, animal feedstuffs and general products. In 1984 Pauls was taken over by Harrisons & Crosfield plc. who subsequently sold off their maltings interests. In 1992 Unilever sold BOCM Silcock to merge with Pauls Agriculture to form BOCM PAULS LTD..
Silcocks Animal Feeds
Based in Hull, taken over by Lever Bothers in XXXX to become Silcock Lever Feeds.
The logo shown below is drawn from memory, it was used in the 1950s and early 1960s on paper sacks and also as their 'stick-on' label for railway stock but I am not certain it was their logo as such.
Fig ___ Silcocks Logo
Silcocks merged with BOCM in 1969, forming BOCM Silcock Feeds under Unilever ownership.
Joseph Rank Ltd
Joseph Rank of Hull set up in business as a flour miller in 1875, after his death the business became a private company in 1899 registered as Joseph Rank Ltd., by this time it was a flour milling and animal feeding stuffs business. In 1933 the business was taken over and re-established as Ranks Limited. In the 1950s Ranks went into the bakery business, in 1962 they bought Hovis McDougal to form Rank Hovis McDougal, becoming one of the Big Three flour milling and bakery businesses in the UK (RHM, Allied Bakeries and Spillers). Their trade name for animal feeds was Blue Cross in the 50s and 60s (probably earlier and later), the illustration below dates from 1961 I believe the writing on the cross says J Rank Ltd.
Fig ___ J Rank sack (tinted from a black and white advert)
Crosfields
A large firm based in Liverpool but with animal feed related premises also in London, Bristol, Glasgow and Belfast. The full company name was Harrisons and Crosfield (now Elementis), it was formed in 1844 when two brothers, Daniel and Smith Harrison, and Joseph Crosfield entered into partnership to trade in tea and coffee. From here the company soon developed into a global trading and tropical plantations company with estates producing tea, coffee, timber, oil palm and rubber. They were heavily involved in the farm feed business and in 1984 they took over Pauls Ltd. and hence in 1992 became owners of BOCM. In the 1940s they became involved in the chemicals business (via a joint venture with Durham Chemicals, UK to manufacture and market chemicals in Canada). By 1962 Harrisons and Crosfield had a majority share holding in Durham Chemicals. Major acquisitions followed from the 1970s onwards with the purchase of key chromium, pigments and specialties businesses. In the 1990s the company sold off its flour mills and feed business and became a chemicals company (now trading as Elementis).
Fig ___ Crosfields Logo
Bibby
Primarily a seed crusher this firm was selling animal feeds from the 1870s. In connection with the seed crushing side of their business they operated a fleet of tank wagons in their livery. For more information see also 'Lineside Industries - Industries associated with docks - seed crushers'
Fig ___ Bibby's feed sack showing logo and typical lettering
Farmers Society
This company was connected with the Co-Operative Wholesale Society (CWS) and operated mills in Hull and Liverpool, they distributed under the African Oil Mills brand and one of its products was 'grazing nuts' for milk cattle. I suspect the hundredweight sack is shown in the advert slightly larger than in real life as it seems bigger than those I have seen in photographs.
Fig ___ Farmer's Society - African Oil Mills sack (later 1950s)
Spillers Pet Foods and Animal Feeds
Spillers was established as a flour milling business in 1829. In the 1840s Spiller and his partner, Samuel Browne, build the UK's second ever steam powered mill. A bakery in Cardiff was acquired in 1856 to make ships' biscuits, and subsequently some lines were introduced for feeding to dogs. By 1914 the company was producing 18 varieties of dog biscuits at factories in Cardiff, Bristol, London, Newcastle and Birkenhead. Shapes, a coloured biscuit for dogs, was introduced in 1907 and in 1927 they introduced Winalot, a dog meal aimed at racing greyhounds (hence the name). Both these dog foods soon developed into major national brands. They expanded into animal feeds and by 1927 the group, then known as Spillers Milling and Associated Industries Limited, was reorganised under the name of Spillers Limited. I have not yet traced a picture of any of their sacks from this period but the sketch below shows the pet foods logo (top) and the animal feeds logo (bottom).
Fig ___ Spillers pet food and animal feed logos
By 1939 the re-formed company had grown substantially and had acquired new businesses in Scotland, closed down several old flour mills, opened new mills at Cardiff, Avonmouth and Newcastle upon Tyne and expanded its pet foods and animal feedingstuffs activities. The illustration shows their huge animal feed mill set up in Avonmouth, the little blob in the lower right is a dock side crane.
Fig ___ Spillers factory Avonmouth (early 1930s)
In 1960 they bought Spratt's Patent Ltd, a company represented both in the flour-based pet foods market and in canned pet foods. In 1964 they bought Scottish Animal Products Ltd (a subsidiary of Robert Wilson & Sons (1894) Ltd, with canneries in Barrhead near Glasgow and Malone in Northern Ireland). In 1969 they bought out another dog food maker, Wright & Company (Liverpool) Ltd and in 1972 they bought the Stamina Foods brand from Rank Hovis McDougall Ltd.
They became Ranks and Spillers in the later 1970s, and were taken over by Dalgety Animal Feeds in 1980. I believe the farm animal feed business was handled by a subsidiary trading as Spillers Grain and Feed Limited. Dalgety subsequently became PIC (Pig Improvement Company) and sold off their animal feeds businesses, the Spillers business was taken over by a management buy-out but in 1998 Nestlé S.A. bought out Spillers Pet Foods, creating one of the world's largest pet care companies. Now merged under the Purina banner but still trading under the spillers brand.
Their 'farm foods' division seems only to cater to horses these days and may always have favoured that side as their main raw material would from the flour mills.
Pratts
Best known for their range of dog biscuits this was a surprisingly large scale enterprise.
Fig ___ Pratts logo
Spratts Patent Limited
This company was founded by an American who, on a trip to England, saw dogs scavenging for ships biscuits on the quay. He returned home and set up to make dog biscuits from flour and 'fibrene', supposedly from buffalo. The main market was the UK and in 1885 Spratts Patent Ltd was set up to cater to the British market (and ended up exporting dog food back to America for many years thereafter). Spratts was primarily a dog food maker (notably for BONIO, the original bone shaped dog biscuit) but had an interest in animal feeds, mainly based on flour but with some meat products as well. This was another large scale enterprise with factories in Aintree, Wisbech and the W G Clarke and Sons (1929) Ltd dog meal factory in East London. In 1960 the company was bought by Spillers. The sign sketched below was an enamel animal feed advert from the 1930s.
Fig ___ Spratts advert
Molassine Co Ltd
Molasses is used in the manufacture of various animal foods, one notable example being Molassine Meal, a black granular material originally sold as a horse food ('Makes horses go!')it was later branded 'for all animals' and is today widely used as a supplement in pig food. The sign below was mounted on a windmill in Kent in the 1920s.
Fig ___ Molassine advertising sign (1920s)
This was produced by Molassine Co Ltd. who were set up in Greenwich in 1900 by Arthur Stein (an East European immigrant) to exploit a 'secret formula for animal feed', basically sphagnum moss mixed with molasses (they used both beet and cane molasses). Another product, on sale in the 1920s, was 'Molassine Dog and Puppy Cakes, Different from all Others'. This company also produced a flour based dog biscuit called Vims which sold well. The advertising slogan was 'Dogs Love Vims' in black and yellow. The picture below, taken from an advert in 1918, shows their hen food sack.
Fig ___ Molassine Hen Food (1918)
During the 1970s they also produced Stimo and Pet Biscuits The sphagnum moss not suitable for animal feed was made into a fertiliser called Rito, which was marketed from the 1930s until the 1960s. The company was bought by United Molasses in the early 1970s and the name changed to Tate & Lyle in 1978. The Greenwich plant, which continued trading under the Molassine brand and was noted for its rather pungent smells, closed in 1981 but production of the Main Ring (horse foods) and Molassine Meal brands continued at a plant in Burton on Trent.
Other firms operating in the farm foods business in the early 1980's included Dalgety Agriculture, and Nitrovit. In the later 1980's several smaller firms were absorbed by either BOCM or Pauls including Marsdens (Lancashire), Burgess Feeds (Yorkshire), Sheldon Jones (Somerset), Cobbledicks (Devon) and Tucks (Norfolk). During this period Ranks and Spillers was bought by Dalgety and Nitrovit (Tiverton and possibly elsewhere) was bought by Bibbys.
Purina
This American pet food company (Ralston Purina Company, part of the Ralston conglomerate) moved into the UK and European market in 1997 by buying Edward Bakers Ltd, a major supplier of branded and private label products from the Harrison & Crossfield plc group (see under Crosfields above). In 2001 Ralston Purina Company merged with Nestlé S.A.'s pet food subsidiary (which had taken over Spillers in 1998). The giant Nestlé Purina PetCare Company is thereby created.
Harbro Limited
Harbro Limited was founded in 1976 to supply animal feeds in North Eastern Scotland. Over the years it has grown into a major national company, however I have found no reference to any rail connected facilities. Harbro Limited is part of the Harbro Group of companies involved in livestock nutrition and animal health care, feed mill and blending plants at four Scottish locations. The core business is the supply of animal feed to dairy, beef, sheep, pig and poultry farmers. The company has feed mills at three Scottish locations and over 20 mobile feed milling units which jointly manufacture over 300,000 tonnes of animal feed per annum. Animal health products are supplied from 12 retail outlets and the group has recently become involved in the manufacture of mineral vitamin feed supplements and feed blocks. A separate transport company running a fleet of 30 vehicles is responsible for the company's distribution.
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