I have a homemade pony pops recipe my fellow local horsefolk praise (and buy) from me. They say mine last longer, don’t crumble apart, and don’t make their horses’ faces sticky they way store bought ones do.
I just made another preordered batch and was thinking–if I wanted to venture forth into getting many more made, perhaps by a professional kitchen, how would I do that? Is it worth it? (Or, what would I need to do to make it worth it?) And, if one of the ingredients is a premade feed–I mix in sweet feed, though the brand doesn’t matter–would the company that makes the feed need to be paid extra beyond the actual purchase of the bags of feed?
Oh, and hey Floppy Joe (should you happen to peruse this thread)…you know, the holidays are coming up, and your wife does have five horses, and she does really like these pops…
Check with a local catering company, or a professional cook who prepares meals for people – the kind you can hire to prepare a weeks worth of meals in their kitchen and deliver them to your family.
This might be something new for them, but the ingredients used in most horse treats are similar to those used in human food, and should be no problem to prepare in a standard kitchen. They could prepare batches of this in off-times from their regular cooking; that might get you a better price. (But not now – the holidays is a busy season for most of them.)
If anything, once you get the capacity worked out, you should be able to set up a cross-promotional deal with a decent feed company that doesn’t already have its own pops.
Your county extension service probably has information on what you need to do to get a license to make animal food products. Often its as simple as renting a few hours in a commercial kitchen to do your batches (try churches, synogogues and community centers) or there may be no rules at all. An Extension service will also usually have classes to support small agricultural and food-producing businesses, to explain out how to incorporate, pay taxes, and all that good stuff, for a sideline business.
Unless you don’t have the time to do it, I don’t see why you would pay someone else to do the thing you already apparently do very well.
I can’t remember where you are, but search for “[county] extension service” or [nearest agricultural university] extension service"