Purina’s Research Center Enlists Help from Tiger Docks
GRAY SUMMIT, MO (June 2015) – Tiger Docks has completed a two-part project at the Purina Animal Nutrition Center that will assist the research facility in evaluating their feed products for various fish species.
Bill Miller, PhD, senior director of companion animal research at Purina Animal Nutrition, LLC, identified the need to suspend fish cages out toward the middle of the center’s lake. Warren Dierker, construction supervisor at the Land O’Lakes-owned facility, helped Miller meet that need. Dierker remembered visiting with Tiger Docks at a St. Louis Boat Show and contacted them about drafting a master plan to address Miller’s research criteria.
Tiger Docks custom designed an 80-foot combination floating platform dock, floating walkway and hand-railed bridge, which Purina asked them to construct in two stages. The initial project was completed last fall and was fully functional at a length of 60 feet. The recently-added second phase extended the structure another 20 feet into the water, providing access to a larger area as well as to deeper water. In addition to the flexibility built into the project design, Tiger Docks created a drawbridge section for inclusion near the middle of the expanse.
“We keep the drawbridge up to prevent raccoons and other critters from getting to the feeding cages,” Miller explained. “We wanted to make it more difficult for unwanted wildlife to have fish for dinner. Also, the locked drawbridge helps keep visitors to the center from inadvertently disturbing the research project.”
“Purina’s drawbridge is the first we’ve done on a floating walkway,” said Marv Davis, Tiger Docks CFO and VP of Commercial & Military Sales. “We were confident we could meet the research farm’s challenge of allowing only research personnel out to the fish feeding area and look forward to helping them with further projects in the years ahead.”
“Working with Tiger Docks went very smoothly,” stated Dierker, who served as the project manager. “Everyone did exactly what they said they were going to do, when they said they were going to do it, and you can’t ask for anything more than that. We asked them to produce the pieces on a short schedule and they met our timeframe.”
In Gray Summit, Missouri, the Purina Animal Nutrition Center is a 1,200-acre working farm where more than 3,000 animals are fed every day. Animal nutritionists and veterinarians live and work with the animals, “Because real life tells us more than we could ever learn in a lab.” The Purina Animal Nutrition Center is separate and across the street from Purina Farms, where families go for animal shows and interactive, educational experiences.