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Majestic
Diary
May
6, 2008
We have had trouble with our grain
supplier since Majestic’s beginning...
We used to feed our 2 pet ducks
Purina Duck Feed, but when Purina changed formulas and
came up with Purina Flockraiser. I didn’t like the idea
of one grain trying to meet the needs of diverse types
of poultry. I called Purina. One of their customer
service representatives highly suggested I feed my pet
ducks Mazuri Waterfowl Maintenance (one of their
divisions) because it is actually intended for the
health and longevity of pet ducks—unlike the Flockraiser.
I went on Mazuri’s website and
found the closest dealer and ordered a bag. Our first
year of owning ducks, I maybe spent $200 on duck food. A
year later we opened the sanctuary and 2 ducks grew to
become 35 ducks/geese. We currently spend around $2600 a
year on duck food. You would think this would be worth
something to a local grain supplier, but trying to get
any kind of customer service out of this man is like
pulling teeth… big, rooted-in teeth.
I can’t tell you how many times he
has forgotten to call in our order and we have had to
run to our local Agway store and buy a bag of
substandard Purina Flockraiser to keep the ducks fed
until he brought in a shipment. Every time I showed up
to buy grain, I’d place the order for the next shipment.
This was the routine every 2 weeks and still, I couldn’t
get my grain in—nor would he order any reasonable
quantity at a time. And then for some stupid reason he
brought in a half dozen bags of Mazuri Waterfowl
Breeder—that I never ordered. I couldn’t get him to
order the Maintenance formula we needed, but he ordered
a pile of Breeder mix that just sat there.
Finally, I put my foot down last
December and told him that we needed a supplier that
could meet the growing needs of our sanctuary and
reminded him that we’ve gone from spending $200 to $2600
in two years and are still growing. He agreed to bring
in a whole skid of Maintenance. It was still a pain in
the ass to get this guy to order the next skid and I
have resorted to ordering it a month ahead of time. I
show up every 3 weeks or so and pile about 8 bags into
my car, chipping away at the skid and then calculating
out when we will need more along with when he will be
placing his order, to be sure we get the next skid in on
time. He was making me manage his business—and I’m the
one paying!
Now it’s Spring and we have lots of
hens laying and, as usual, I call and place an order for
a few bags of Breeder to get us through the season. The
kid that works there says he will tell the owner to
bring it in, and it will be in within a week and a half.
I call today to see if my bags came
in. The kid tells me that the owner refuses to buy any
more Breeder food until I buy the 6 bags he has on
hand—that ones that HE ordered over a year and a half
ago in error (nothing like calling me a week ago to let
me know. Good thing I still have some on hand). I told
the kid I am not paying for the owner’s screw ups to
relieve him of his aged inventory that no longer
contains any worthwhile nutritional value—especially for
a laying hen. The kid says he’s sorry, and I immediately
go to the Mazuri website and look for other dealers.
This is the last straw.
I left messages at a number of
places and talk to a couple people who say they will
have their owners or managers call me back. In the
meantime, I just keep on calling, “Majestic Waterfowl
Sanctuary looking for a new Mazuri feed supplier.”
Now, I don’t know about you, but if
I have a grain business and I get a call from an animal
sanctuary looking for a new feed supplier, I’m going to
at least call them and find out how much business we are
talking about. But, I can tell you, not one of them
called me back. Not one.
In the meantime, I just kept on
calling. And then… the light shined down upon Majestic.
I found a place where the owner is actually willing to
come to the phone and talk to me. I tell her who we are
and what we do, and I tell her we need a Mazuri supplier
who can handle our growing needs—a supplier our animals
can depend on. She says she orders twice a month from
Mazuri and would love our business and will even call
me every 2 weeks to see if we need to place an
order! No more micro-managing our feed supply! TAH DAH!
That means I no longer have to order by the skid either
and we can have fresher food for our ducks and geese!
I tell her it’s also been
frustrating that we have handed out business cards to
all of our new adopting families and every one of them
who has driven out to our supplier’s place have found
that he didn’t have any Mazuri in stock… lost business
for him, unreliable information provided for us. Not
good. She said she will gladly give us a stack of
business cards to put in our adoption packages and she
will keep a few bags in stock at all times, so folks can
have a reliable source for duck and goose food. She will
even offer to sell it by the pound for folks who have
only one or two ducks. How about that customer service!
WOO HOO!
She says she orders special bunny
food for a guy with a rabbit and special monkey food for
a few monkey owners (monkey owners?!). She took our
first order and it will be in on the 20th.
She said if we need any bags in the meantime, just let
her know and she can get them from other dealers in the
area that she knows of. I assure her we are all set—plenty
on hand to get us through.
Since our OLD supplier refuses to
order the grain we need, he can keep his skid of
Maintenance food until it too ages to be a year and a
half old. I told our NEW supplier, “I have never
burned this guy—given him our business for three and a
half years, and if he would have seized the moment, he
could have had the business of a dozen other families as
well. There is no way I’m paying for $300 worth of old,
bad grain that should be discarded. No way. And if he’s
pulling this stunt now, I can’t risk that he will step
up his game when we are ready to order a new skid of
Maintenance.”
She said to me, “Kim, every
single grain dealer loses bags of grain every year.
Someone moves, or finds another dealer, or sometimes an
animal dies, and we’re left with the grain. It is built
into our budget—it’s part of the business.” And then
she added: “I can’t believe this guy actually told
you that it is your responsibility to purchase his old
grain or he won’t buy you any new grain.” She said
she knows a number of other grain dealers in CT and has
never heard of such a thing from any of them.
And so… the bags of Breeder still
sit there… along with a fresh skid of Maintenance food.
If he no longer wants to meet our sanctuary’s needs and
refuses to order our grain for us, then we are done
buying our grain from him. Our ducks and geese deserve
better and now they will have it.
I just love a happy ending that
starts with a new beginning…
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