Gene Rowe
credits mentor, perseverance for success of his feed business Story by Amy Beth Graves
Industry Excellence Award Winner Gene Rowe found one of the biggest mentors in his life in an unusual way. More than four decades ago, he was in the office of a grain and feed company where he worked when a notebook from a former manager caught his eye. Thumbing through the notebook, he noticed it was full of feed formulas from someone named Carl S. Akey. “I was really interested in learning how to make feed and better feeds at a lower cost. I guess you could say I was obsessed about it,” Gene said. “I thought to myself ‘I need to talk to this guy and he’s not that far away.’” At the time, Gene was 28 years old and full of energy and drive. He called up Carl, who was an encyclopedia of information about the feed industry and an inspiration for Gene. “I probably think about him every day of my life and the things he taught me in nutrition and the way to run a business and treat people,” Gene said. “He’s been a big part of my life.” It’s hardly any wonder that Gene was inspired by Carl. His mentor was inducted into the Ohio Agricultural Hall of Fame in 1996 for being one of the nation’s top feed nutritionists and helping revolutionize the livestock feed industry. 56 | Ohio Cattleman | Expo Issue 2021
“Carl Akey motivated me and everything I learned about the feed industry is because of him,” Gene said. “He drove me to learn more and more and was a very kind and knowledgeable gentleman.” Today, Gene is a successful businessman who has operated Rowe Nutrition, LLC. in West Manchester for more than 40 years. The Preble County company sells livestock and specialty feed in 29 states with dozens of truckloads leaving the warehouses weekly. About a dozen employees work for the company, including Gene’s son, Larry, and daughter, Tina Dailey. Over the years, Gene has worked to develop nutritionally superior feed that costs less than that sold by large feed corporations. He’s able to keep prices low by cutting out the overhead and selling directly to wholesale dealers who then sell it at retail prices. The company advertises that its formulas are fixed and “are not least cost computer generated that change day by day, nor do they contain an abundance of lower cost by-product ingredients.” “I always thought there ought to be a way to make feed cheaper instead of paying the corporations and the salesmen and all the high markups,”
he said. “You can make a feed as good or even better (than name brand companies) if you know nutrition and how to put it together and what ingredients to buy. It takes a lot of time to learn all those things.” When Gene started his feed business, the swine industry accounted for about 85 percent of his sales. But then the industry hit a rough patch with hogs selling at low prices, and a lot of local farmers stopped raising swine. After that, Gene started formulating specialty feeds, starting with show cattle feed. “A couple of big farms that were known all over the country liked our feed and said they saw a tremendous difference in their cattle. For no reason other than being nice guys, they promoted it for us. At cattle sales, they’d tell people who bought their animals that they needed to buy our feed. They put us on the map, and it’s word of mouth that made my business grow. Because we don’t advertise and have low overhead, we’re able to keep our prices low,” Gene said. Today, Rowe Nutrition offers not only cattle feed but equine, goat, rabbit, sheep, poultry, swine and guinea pig feed. With the help of Carl and years of research, Gene became a self-
