Exotic pet food business embraces science and tech – AgUpdate

Todd Goodman took a family bait business and transformed it into a major wholesaler of exotic pet feed. He displays a tray full of waxworms at his company’s Marion, Ill., facility.
MARION, Ill. — Todd Goodman jokingly refers to himself as a “bug rancher.” But he’s serious about his work.
“I’m a farmer,” he said while walking around the empire he has created.
The owner of Timberline Live Pet Foods has transformed a local bait business into the nation’s largest producer of exotic animal feed. And though the “livestock” he raises weigh less than a gram apiece, he puts as much care into his product as a cattle rancher or pig farmer.
The small family business that supplied local bait shops with worms, crickets and minnows a few decades ago has become a major national wholesaler. Timberline supplies all Petco stores and half of the nation’s PetSmart stores with exotic animal feed. In addition, he sells insects to several zoos, including the St. Louis Zoo, the San Diego Zoo and the Brookfield Zoo.
While the business started by his father, Ray Goodman, was successful, it was never going to be anything more than a local venture with a handful of employees. Timberline Fisheries remains its corporate name, but the company has virtually nothing to do with fishing today.
Todd Goodman carried with him a vision that would transport Timberline into a brave new world.
“I grew up in this business,” he said. “I counted worms when I was 8 years old. When I came out of college in 1988, I knew that, professionally, I was going to be challenged.”
He took a good look at the industry and realized its limitations. The bait business is seasonal, for one thing. And there is little room for growth. His eyes opened when he attended an exotic pet food show.
“I said, holy cow! There’s a whole new world out there. No season, no regionality,” he said.
The son convinced the father to go in a different direction. Instead of selling bait, they would sell feed.
“Virtually everything I carried on my truck for bait also translates into the exotic animal business as food,” Goodman said. “We had to find a way to make our eight to 10 employees busy.”
He did, growing the workforce to about 160 today, working at a campus consisting of dozens of buildings fitted with state-of-the-art equipment.
When Todd Goodman took over, Timberline’s business was 1% pet food and 99% bait. That is reversed today.
He credits his ambition and optimal timing for the company’s success. He was willing to work with customers in the exotic animal business by adapting to their needs, something many of those in the industry were not willing to do.
“It’s the way we targeted pet stores,” he said. “We told them we’re new. How do you want them? What do you want the box to look like? I think that resonated with a lot of pet stores.”
Lifestyles were changing, including pet ownership.
“We got into it at the right time, just when the specialty segment in the pet industry was growing,” he said. “We met what was going on with people. They were moving around more, maybe living in a smaller place. You can have a tank with a lizard in it and leave for a weekend and it’s going to be fine.”
Pop culture was even a factor.
“Jurassic Park had just come out, which oddly made people want to have a little dinosaur in their hand,” Goodman said.
Timberline ships billions of crickets, flies and worms annually. Each week about 50 million go out the doors of the company’s main campus, just south of Marion, in Williamson County, Illinois.
The company ships thousands of boxes of live pet food every week.
The fate of his live product hasn’t changed through the years: They’re all eaten. But the emphasis is different today. Instead of fishermen hoping to hook some crappie, the consumers are owners of reptiles and birds.
“Now we’re talking to our customers about nutrition,” he said.
Timberline worked with scientists to develop optimal feed formulations for its insects. It took 10 years to come up with the proper mix.
“We’re taking every species we grew and mimicking a diet they would forage on in the wild because they forage on different plants,” Goodman said. “Just like farmers want to fatten up cows and pigs, our industry does the same. But it was cheap food. Now we’ve added back all of that nutrition that they naturally get in their diet.”
About 22 years ago Timberline approached Purina for help in engineering a diet for its insects that will accomplish the company’s priorities. The proprietary feed — Timberline goes through 50 tons a week — consists of ground grain that is wetted with nutrients such as fatty acids and carotene, then dried again. It emerges basically as a corn or soybean-based powder. Wheat midds are also used for bedding for insects during transportation.
“It took 10 years to come up with it,” Goodman said of the feed, manufactured in its Missouri plant.
Timberline has added products to its line. Hornworms, flightless fruit flies and calciworms are now offered. But crickets remain the biggest seller. The company ships the bugs in 10 sizes, the smallest able to fit on a pinhead.
“Chameleons are live born. They need very small food,” Goodman said. “The size of the food, if it’s not a soft worm, can’t be larger than the distance between the corners of the mouth. When I ship those today, they’ll be that size in a few days. So we have to hurry and get them to our customers.”
Reptiles and amphibians are the main consumers. But the company also supplies some birds, tropical fish and even primates. Crickets also find their way into large ape enclosures at zoos, not as food but as exercise equipment.
“They’ll dump a thousand crickets in there,” Goodman said. “That gets them moving. They chase them. They’ll even eat some.”
In some societies insects are consumed by humans, and some environmental activists advocate an increase in the consumption of high-protein insects. But Goodman is not on board.
“I am not going to make this a food-grade insect farm for four reasons: U-S-D-A,” he said. “We’re regulated now, but with them coming in here wanting to white-glove us, that’s a different story. Plus, I’m just not going to eat bugs.”
Anyway, he doesn’t believe insect production is more sustainable than livestock.
“Take it from a cricket farmer — it’s not,” he said.
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Nat Williams is Southern Illinois field editor, writing for Illinois Farmer Today, Iowa Farmer Today and Missouri Farmer Today.
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Todd Goodman took a family bait business and transformed it into a major wholesaler of exotic pet feed. He displays a tray full of waxworms at his company’s Marion, Ill., facility.
The company ships thousands of boxes of live pet food every week.
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