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Producers Choice Award: Osborne Fast Start Feeder
2017-06-27 21:31:00| National Hog Farmer
Photo: National Hog Farmer Staff Writer Kevin Schulz (red shirt) presents the Osborne team with a commemorative print from the 2017 World Pork Expo, honoring them as this year’s recipient of the Producers’ Choice award. Not all products in the New Product Tour can make the narrow list of finalists – only eight of the 31 nominees made the final list. An even more elite area is that only one product can garner the title as the Producers’ Choice Award, as people could vote online prior to the World Pork Expo or place a paper ballot during the show at the National Hog Farmer booth. Osborne’s Fast Start Wean-to-Finish Feeder came out as the fan favorite once all the ballots had been tabulated. Osborne’s Fast Start Feeder is an answer to the age-old problem of designing a feeder that is capable of feeding newly weaned pigs, and yet prevents the excessive feed wasting that occurs as pigs grow. Traditional gravity-flow, rectangular feeders easily start young pigs, but adjusting them to prevent feed waste throughout the growing cycle is a management nightmare. Osborne pioneered no-waste, mechanical-flow feed delivery in the 1980s, but the system requires the pigs’ ability to operate a device (like a “wheel”) by mechanically turning it. This is sometimes difficult for very young, newly weaned pigs. On receiving the Producers Choice Award, Osborne’s Marketing Representative, Jim Hindman, says, “As an employee-owned company, receiving this award is really important to all of our employee owners. We listened to the needs of producers and industry experts, and this new feeder is the result of our efforts. .” Amy Conrad, Sales and Marketing manager with Osborne, agrees, saying that “this award is validation that we developed a product that producers want.”
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Category:Agriculture and Forestry