Kaytee
Wild bird and small animal food from Chilton, Wisconsin, in a business that started as an 1866 grain elevator
🇺🇸 American Manufacturing
Our assessment
Company details
Where Kaytee products are made
The business begins with a grain elevator built in Chilton, Wisconsin in 1866. The company is still headquartered in Chilton. Very little in American consumer manufacturing has that kind of continuity of place.
In the 1940s Kaytee’s wild bird mixes helped create the wild bird food category outright. In the 1950s Capital Airlines chose Kaytee Parakeet Mixture for the live parakeet it carried as a mascot on every flight.
The Chilton laboratory is A2LA accredited to ISO/IEC 17025 and the company carries an SQF food-safety mark. For animal feed, where contamination is the real risk, accredited in-house testing is the substantive part of the operation.
The Chilton, Wisconsin address, the 1866 origin and the Central Garden & Pet ownership are all published by Kaytee on its own site, as is the “grown and packed with pride in the USA” language and the five-US-facilities statement on the All American Blend. That said, most Kaytee food product pages carry no origin statement at all, and the habitats, cages, toys and accessories carry none anywhere — so the emblem reads American Manufacturing and no brand-wide Made in USA claim is made.
The story
In 1866 Nicholas Knauf built a grain elevator in Chilton, Wisconsin. That elevator is the ancestor of everything Kaytee now sells, and Chilton is still where the company is headquartered.
It traded as Knauf & Tesch from 1897. William Engler Sr. joined in 1945 and bought the business out in 1964; the formal renaming to Kaytee Products came in the 1970s.
The pivot that mattered happened in the 1940s, when the company’s wild bird mixes helped bring the wild bird food category into existence. By the 1950s Capital Airlines was feeding Kaytee Parakeet Mixture to the live parakeet mascot it carried on every flight.
Central Garden & Pet acquired Kaytee in December 1997, and in 2006 merged its operations with Pets International, also Central-owned, headquartered together in Chilton. The company now packs at one of five manufacturing facilities across the United States.
Why they matter
Animal feed is a category where the manufacturing is completely invisible to the buyer and where the consequences of getting it wrong land on something that cannot complain. An ISO/IEC 17025 accredited lab in the same town as the mill is a real answer to that.
The 1866 date is not decoration either. Kaytee has been milling and blending grain in one Wisconsin town for a hundred and sixty years, and that kind of supply relationship with regional growers cannot be reconstituted once it is lost.
And the scoping is worth noting: the food carries the origin language, the cages and habitats do not. Reading the claim at the level the company actually makes it is the whole discipline.
Shop Kaytee products
Browse Kaytee bird and small animal food stocked on the Buy American Campaign store.
Frequently asked questions
Is Kaytee food made in the USA?
Kaytee’s All American Blend is described as grown and packed with pride in the USA, packaged at one of five manufacturing facilities located throughout the USA. Many other Kaytee product pages carry no origin statement, and the habitats, cages and accessories carry none, so check the individual product.
Where is Kaytee located?
Kaytee Products, Inc., 521 Clay Street, Chilton, Wisconsin 53014 — the same town where the business began as a grain elevator in 1866.
Who owns Kaytee?
Central Garden & Pet Company, which acquired Kaytee in December 1997. In 2006 Kaytee merged operations with Pets International (Super Pet), also Central-owned, in Chilton.
How old is Kaytee?
The business dates to 1866, when Nicholas Knauf built a grain elevator in Chilton, Wisconsin. It traded as Knauf & Tesch from 1897 and was renamed Kaytee Products in the 1970s.