How are we different?

Pigeon fanciers are flooded with sales pitches in the catalogs, advertisements and well-meaning advice from friends and mentors. Winning races, shows or simply keeping your flock healthy can be daunting when faced with so many decisions and options. And honestly, it's not all bad advice. But it can be daunting to sort through it all. 

I frequently get a question from potential customers that asks "What makes Kastle Pigeon different?"

It's a legitimate question with both very clear and very nuanced answers. 

As a company, we are really quite different than most because of our size. We are small, which allows us to focus on a core group of products and to focus on customer service. We currently only sell our own products which allows us to be experts on those few items. I personally pick up the ingredients from the Alltech® headquarters.

Our products are designed to optimize the health of a bird in order for them to live, breed, fly or compete to their potential. Of course we are not the only ones claiming to do that. This is really at the heart of the question I get. What makes our products different from other natural health products? 

If you are using a product that sounds a lot like ours, it's entirely possible that it may use Alltech® ingredients. If the product does use an Alltech® ingredient, it is also very likely that it works! To find the differences, you will have to look a little deeper and to the details.

• Who and how were the other products developed? Our answer is below. But are you confident with how others are designing their products? Are they simply re-packaging a poultry product? 
• Do we share one common ingredient or multiple ingredients? Other pigeon products are using an Alltech® ingredient. They aren't saying it because they don't have a contract with Alltech® (we do), or they don't want to reveal their source. It's very very unlikely that other pigeon products are exclusively using multiple ingredients from Alltech®.
• How do the costs compare? Our costs are lower than others because we are small and there are practically no transport costs since I pick up the ingredients myself and it is packaged locally. 
• Do the products cover the differing life-cycle needs of your birds (i.e. breeding, young birds and performance)? Kastle Pigeon products were designed from scratch to do such a thing.
• Were the ingredients sourced from a reputable company? Did they come from overseas where there are different regulations and long transport/storage times? Ours are made in the USA and we are proud of it and very open about our source. Do you ever see another pigeon product tell you where they get their ingredients? 
• Do the products have a good shelf-life and are fresh? How would you know this? Our labelling is thorough and our products are mixed in very small batches every few months. They don't sit around long!

We use Alltech®, a top-five global animal nutrition company for our ingredients. These are among the finest quality and research-tested ingredients you can find. But I'm not the only one to know that. There are a small number of known, and likely a few unknown, pigeon supplement companies who are also using Alltech® ingredients.

Here's the difference: I have a unique relationship with the company in that I live 6 miles from them and have direct access to their top nutritionist and have support from their founder. Having this kind of intimate relationship with our supplier is at the core of what makes us different.

I'll give you an example: As I was researching Alltech's® products, I found one that sounded like it would be a good addition to our formula. It is designed to remove the ammonia odor from feces. Sounds perfect to tamp down the smell of a loft or those stinky nest-poops, right? Well, as it turns out, it simply doesn't work that way. I wouldn't have known that if I didn't have a relationship with Alltech's® nutritionist to explain it to me. I avoided adding an unnecessary ingredient that would have added cost with no benefit and I avoided making a claim (reduce ammonia smell) that wasn't true. 

You can be assured that the Kastle Pigeon formulation is like no other and could not possibly be designed any better. There is no guesswork here. That, and our personal attention to our customers, is what separates us from other health supplement companies. 

David Stephenson and Sylvan Izzy

Alltech headquarters, Nicholasville, Ky.