By Woodrow Polston
Brady and Tessa Chasteen, who recently began offering horse riding lessons at their property just outside the city limits of Vandalia, have announced that they are now selling animal feed. Tessa said that this will be a good supplement to the riding lessons and that she has had experience selling feed in the past.
“This is what I did before I was dispatching trucks for a living,” said Tessa. “Before the pandemic I was selling feed in a territory that included Missouri, Iowa, Wisconsin, and Illinois. I was on the road a lot and wasn’t comfortable with it because of having a child. So, I went to work for friends dispatching trucks from home. Now I am able to be home and have decided to begin selling feed again, which may become full time at some point,” she added.
Bryan, who works for Nutrien Ag Solutions in Bowling Green, said that the product they are making available at their property is coming from the Feeder’s Grain out of Bowling Green.
“Tessa is a 1099 contract worker for them,” said Brady. We earn commission as we sell their product. It is a good opportunity for locals who buy feed, because there aren’t many options between here and Mexico,” he added. The Chasteens have been selling feed products for a few weeks now. Ahead of opening the space to store the products, they had a large concrete pad poured in their barn to accommodate the pallets. Tessa said that they wanted to do an open house for the new business but decided to hold off until later.
“With the way that the weather has been, we just want to wait until planting is done,” said Tessa. “We are hoping to do an open house around the end of June. We anticipate that a lot of our customers will have bigger cattle operations who need mineral tubs and such, and most of them are busy with planting crops right now. Even most of the people who have horses around here are busy growing crops. So, it’s not the best time of year to try and get people together right now,” she added.
The list of available products that are being offered by the Chasteens include feed for horses, chickens, pigs, and cattle. They plan to also offer goat and sheep feed in the future. Tessa said that they should be able to provide just about anything that a customer would need in terms of feed.
“We can get just about anything short of bulk feed, which can be obtained at the Feeder’s Grain. They have a pretty big customer base in the area already that we can help to serve. As far as picking up new customers, we hope to attract convenience customers who have a few horses or chickens and don’t want to drive an hour to pick up one bag of feed. We recently picked up a new customer from Farber who didn’t previously buy from Feeder’s Grain,” she added.
For more information about available products, you may contact the Chasteens at 314-540-2303, or the Feeder’s Grain at 573-324-5411.