Lafeber’s
Bird food mixed, formed and packaged under one roof on the Lafeber family farmland in Cornell, Illinois
🇺🇸 Made in USA
Our assessment
Company details
Where Lafeber’s products are made
Lafeber states that its manufacturing facility has always been located on the Lafeber family farmland and that all of its products are mixed, formed and packaged under one roof. Bird food is an easy category to contract out to a co-packer and relabel. Lafeber names its own site and describes the whole process happening there.
Parakeet Nutri-Berries, the product the company is best known for, lists Made in the USA on the Lafeber Family Farm among its bullet points. Nutri-Start baby bird formula, a very different product for a very different job, lists Made in the USA. Two families, each stating it on its own page.
The first Lafeber pellet was developed in the back room of a veterinary clinic by a vet who had watched seed-only diets make birds ill. The company is still run around that premise, and it publishes veterinary resources alongside the food rather than only selling it.
The sentence that the Lafeber manufacturing facility has always been located on the Lafeber family farmland and that all products are mixed, formed and packaged under one roof is quoted from the company own Our Story page. The Made in the USA on the Lafeber Family Farm line was read on the Parakeet Nutri-Berries product page and the Made in the USA line on the Nutri-Start Baby Bird Food product page, both on 12 September 2026. The Cornell, Illinois location appears in the site-wide footer and the Cornell, IL 61319 postcode on the company contact page. The 1949 veterinary degree and the early 1970s first pellet are dated on the Our Story page. No founding year is printed in this profile, because the company does not publish one cleanly; a year has not been inferred from the dates that are published.
The story
Lafeber Company was built by a father-and-son team of veterinarians, and the problem it was founded to solve was a medical one. Dr. T.J. Lafeber, who graduated from the veterinary college of Iowa State University in 1949, kept seeing caged birds arrive sick from seed-only diets that let the bird eat its favourite seeds and ignore everything else.
His answer, developed in the back room of his veterinary clinic in the early 1970s, was the first commercial bird-food pellet: a formed food a bird could not pick apart. The idea that a bird should not be able to select its way into malnutrition still shapes the whole product line.
The best-known expression of it is the Nutri-Berry, a round of whole grains and seeds bound together so the bird has to work at it and cannot sort out the fat and leave the rest. Around it sit Avi-Cakes, Premium Daily Diet pellets, hand-feeding formula for baby birds and, more recently, food for small animals and backyard chickens.
All of it is made in Cornell, Illinois, on land the family farms. The company states that its plant has always been there and that mixing, forming and packaging all happen under the same roof, which is unusual in a category where contract packing is the norm.
Why they matter
Pet food is one of the easiest categories in which to have someone else make your product. A brand can be a label, a formula sheet and a purchase order to a co-packer three states away, and nothing on the bag would tell you. Lafeber names its plant, names the land it sits on, and says the whole process happens there.
The origin statement then survives the test that matters: it repeats on the products themselves, and on more than one kind. A bird treat and a hand-feeding formula for a chick are different manufacturing problems, and both pages carry the claim.
There is also the matter of why the company exists. It was started by a vet who was tired of treating birds made ill by their own food, and it still publishes veterinary resources next to the products. That is a manufacturer with a reason to care what goes in the bag, which is worth more than a flag printed on it.
Shop Lafeber’s products
Browse Lafeber Nutri-Berries, Avi-Cakes, gourmet pellets and hand-feeding formula in the Buy American Campaign store.
Frequently asked questions
Where is Lafeber bird food made?
In Cornell, Illinois. The company states that its manufacturing facility has always been located on the Lafeber family farmland and that all of its products are mixed, formed and packaged under one roof.
Is Lafeber food actually made in the USA?
Yes. Parakeet Nutri-Berries list Made in the USA on the Lafeber Family Farm, and Nutri-Start baby bird formula lists Made in the USA, on the company own product pages.
Who started the company?
A father-and-son team of veterinarians. Dr. T.J. Lafeber graduated from the veterinary college of Iowa State University in 1949 and developed the first commercial bird-food pellet in the back room of his clinic in the early 1970s.
Why does this profile not give a founding year?
Because the company does not publish one cleanly. The Buy American Campaign never guesses a founding date or takes one from an unreliable third party, so the emblem on this profile carries no year.