Fehrway Feeds has been a key provider for local farms in southern Manitoba for almost 20 years, especially to the smaller backyard farms, but not to minimize the business they do for larger hog and cattle farms.

With three locations to serve the livestock industry, a store and their main feed mill in Hasket, only a mile from the North Dakota border, a new store in Ridgeville, and a recent move to a much larger facility in Winkler, MB gives this family owned business a leg-up.

Fehrway Feeds has formulated quality feed for livestock since 1995. “Our vision is to provide local farmers, large and small, with a high quality, yet affordable, feed,” said the company website. “All of our feed begin with grain from local farmers. The feed is manufactured on site at our feed mill located 13 miles south of Winkler on Hwy#32. Fehrway Feeds’ recipes have stood the test of time and have been carefully formulated with animal nutrition at the foremost.”

It is an interesting story going back to 1988, a severe drought year, when Dave and Nancy Fehr got married and purchased an old homestead with an outdated and well-used seed/feed mill elevator on it, (many years earlier known as CC Reimer’s Haskett Feed Mill), still in operation today. Dave started mixing his own hog feed because he could do it inside the old feed mill on their property, which was better than working outside in the cold with his mix-mill in the Village of Rosengart where he owned and operated his hog farm.

Soon friends and neighbors started requesting feed for their animals. As the livestock industry grew, so did the demand for feed. In 1995, he purchased a ’75 International truck and feed box and started delivering the product. The next year, they officially registered the name “Fehrway Feeds & Livestock Equipment”. Dave and Nancy never envisioned being the owners of a feed mill as it has become today. Besides the feed mill operation, Fehrway Feeds expanded with a retail store, on site, in 2004.

Only five years later, the continued demand for convenience and ongoing commitment to customer service, Fehrway Feeds seized the opportunity to expand once again. It opened its doors to a second retail store in 2009 in the City of Winkler. And, in May of 2015, another store was purchased … this time in the Town of Ridgeville, Manitoba (formerly known as Ridgeville Lumber & Hardware). Fehrway was thrilled to open its third retail store and serve their customers out east. Dennis Rempel, who oversees the operation in Winkler says Fehrway Feeds has grown substantially in the last four or five years.

“We’ve grown lots in the last four or five years and always looking to expand so we can give the customers what they are asking for,” said Rempel. “By doing that, you need to get bigger and you need to get better. We sell an awful lot of feed and cattle supplies, tagging products, chick feeders, waterers, anything and everything to do with livestock is what we try to take care of.”

The current move and expansion was long overdue. A move that saw them stay on the same street, just a few businesses over to the south.

“We were compounding at the previous location, piling things onto other things, and it kind of gets in the way and becomes cluttered because we’re getting too small,” he said. “We try to base our stock and products and what we bring in, on what customers are asking for. So, when a customer asks for a specific product we bring more of that in and see if it will move or not. And if it doesn’t, we get rid of it and then we look at other avenues.”

When asked if they serve the entire livestock industry, Rempel says they have a lot of smaller producers. “We have a lot of people, we call them backyard farmers, where they raise their own chickens, might have a dairy cow or two, have a few animals for themselves at home, as well as some bigger farmers,” he said.

“We sell a lot of oil, barrels, totes, or bulk, selling a number of common brand name oils, oil stabilizers, fuel conditioners lubricants grease and sprays.” When it comes to pigs, again a lot of back yard folks that have five or ten pigs, but by and large, it is mostly the people that have four or, five, or six animals and get together with family and friends, in November to slaughter those animals to fill their freezers for the coming year.

“We do supply some larger hog and cattle farmers and their feed trucks basically go non-stop,” said Rempel. “However, it’s an area we’d like to get into, and we hired a well-known livestock supplies and equipment salesperson, Jake Klassen to help us with that expansion.”

They employ a staff of 16 to 18 people. In the future, Rempel would love to see the business outgrow the new place, or even expand it, and get bigger and better.

“With this new location, we have a huge parking lot, which hindered us at the other place,” he said. “Here you can come in and do donuts and never worry about hitting someone else, thus enabling us to bring in many more items like corral panels, and freestanding panels, windbreaks, and all the bale feeders, railway ties, and fence posts.” •

— By Harry Siemens