The hard questions

Because FeedForté is sold into countries with very different purchasing power, and it is priced by region. Publishing one figure would mean overcharging some buyers and undercharging others.

What that does not mean is that the price depends on you. The figure for your region is set in advance and is the same for every buyer in it: your company’s size, your tonnage and what you pay today do not change the number quoted. Neither does the shape of it: one payment, a perpetual licence on a security key you keep, and no subscription, per-seat renewal, per-tonne charge, hosting cost or locked modules. Only the number changes.

Write with roughly where you are and what you produce, and you get the figure in reply. No form, and no discovery call you have to sit through first.

On the same ingredients, the same values, the same limits and the same prices, the cost will match. The mix may not always: when two combinations cost exactly the same, more than one answer is genuinely least-cost, and two correct systems can each return a different one.

A differing cost is the thing worth investigating, and it nearly always means one system is quietly enforcing something the other is not. FeedForté applies no automatic ceiling of its own, so a blank maximum genuinely means unrestricted, and after every build it shows which limits are holding the price and what each one is costing.

That is not hypothetical. An early disagreement with a commercial system was traced to a cap FeedForté itself was applying behind the scenes: it starved a ration of one energy source and shifted the whole balance. That cap was removed, there are now none at all, and the answers then matched ingredient by ingredient.

Three independent layers. The calculation core is checked against reference implementations built on entirely different foundations. It has been compared on real production rations against an established commercial system, reproducing the result ingredient by ingredient. And the compiled engine that ships is tested against a stored library of worked formulas: ordinary rations, dry-matter targets, category limits, ratios, fixed ingredients and edge cases, and must reproduce every one of them exactly before a build is released.

The test that should actually convince you is your own: enter a ration you already run and compare it line by line. If the cost differs, tell me. The software names which limits are holding the price and what each costs, which is where the difference nearly always turns out to be.

Almost certainly, because it has no concept of species at all. There are no requirement tables, no species models and no fixed nutrient list. You create the nutrients you work with, any name, unit, grouping or precision, and the calculation treats every one of them identically.

So: ruminants on fibre and protein fractions with an enforced dry-matter basis; swine on digestible amino acids against net energy; aquaculture on digestible fractions with a controlling protein-to-energy ratio; pet food on maximums, ratio bands and an energy density from your own equation.

One honest note. Nothing is pre-loaded, so for any species you create your nutrients and import or type your ingredient values. That is real work: usually a first week – and work most professionals do anyway, because local raw materials never match a supplied catalogue.

Because a formulation is a professional decision with real consequences, and it belongs to the person accountable for it. A tool that ships opinions ships them everywhere – including into a country, a breed or a climate where they are wrong. If the software quietly supplied a requirement and you did not notice, you would have signed off on a number you never chose.

FeedForté computes precisely and explains itself completely: what the ration costs, which limits are holding the price, what each one costs, what moving it would do, and why a ration cannot be built. Then it stops. The practical benefit is that the same inputs give the same result every time, with nothing hidden behind it.

A fair question to ask a small vendor, and I would rather answer it before you ask. There is no account that can be closed and nothing of yours is uploaded, but I will not tell you the software is independent of me, because it is not. FeedForté confirms your key is still active each time it starts, and that check reaches a service I run. Once it passes, the program runs with no connection at all until you unplug the key.

So there are two dependencies, and I will name them plainly: a replacement key if yours is lost or fails, and that start-up check. Ask me to put a continuity commitment in writing before you buy: covering replacement keys, continued installation for existing customers, and a build that no longer performs that check should I ever stop, and I will put it in your quotation.

Your data is independent regardless. It lives in files in a folder you chose, and all of it exports to spreadsheet files and self-contained documents you already hold.

Your data is not trapped inside the application. Everything exports to self-contained files carrying your ingredient database, price lists, formulas and archived rations. Keep a copy on whatever schedule you already use for your other business records.

Recovering onto a replacement machine means installing FeedForté, plugging in the same security key, and bringing your exported data back in. There is no re-activation step and nothing to request from me: the first start on that machine needs an internet connection so it can collect your licence, and after that it works as before. Ask me to walk you through those exact steps before you buy, so you have seen the recovery rather than been told about it.

To be explicit: there is no automatic backup and no cloud copy. Keeping one is your arrangement to make, not something the software does for you.

You move the key. The licence is bound to the key, not to the machine, and never reads its hardware fingerprint, so a new laptop, a rebuilt disk or the spare computer in the mill office all work the same way. Unplug the key, plug it in there, install FeedForté if it is not already on it. No re-activation and no file to request: the new computer collects the licence itself the first time you plug in, so have it connected for that.

This is the improved arrangement, and it exists because of the older one. FeedForté was originally activated against one specific computer, so every hardware change meant asking me for a new licence file: free and same-day, but still a dependency on me being reachable on the morning your machine died. The key removes that entirely, which is exactly why it was changed.

The trade is worth stating plainly: the key has to be plugged into whichever computer you are formulating on, and it runs one desk at a time. If two people genuinely need to formulate at once, say so when you enquire and we supply a second key.

Write to me and I arrange a replacement. Have the terms confirmed in writing with your quotation: what a replacement costs, how quickly it ships to your country, and what happens to the original if it turns up later, so there is nothing to negotiate on the day you actually need it.

Two things soften it, and one thing does not. Your data is not on the key: your ingredient database, price lists, formulas and archived rations sit in a folder on the computer, and every report you have already produced is a self-contained document you still hold. But FeedForté will not open that folder without a key, so tell me the day it happens rather than the week after, and keep your exports somewhere you can read them without the program.

Treat the key the way you would treat a company chequebook. It is the licence, and whoever holds it can run the software.

One key runs one formulation desk at a time, which suits the buyers this was built for: a mill with one formulation desk, or a consulting nutritionist working from a laptop. Install it on as many of your own computers as you like: the key decides which one is working. Within one installation you can hold many separate plants with completely isolated data, which is how a consultant keeps client databases from contaminating each other, and several independent ingredient databases side by side.

What it does not do is give several people simultaneous access to one shared live database over a network. If two desks need to formulate at the same time, say so and we supply the keys you need. But if your requirement is central multi-site governance with administrator-managed accounts, this is a single-desk instrument and a larger platform will fit you better.

No, and I would rather be clear now than let you discover it later. FeedForté ends at the document: a printed batch mixing ticket giving the mixing sequence, the exact weight for each ingredient, a running total, and blank columns for what was actually weighed and signed off.

That is how most small and mid-sized mills genuinely operate, and the ticket is designed for the operator who holds it. It does not drive automated batching controllers and it does not integrate with ERP systems. If that integration is a requirement, a platform vendor is the right choice for you.

Through spreadsheet files, which is normally the fastest route in. Your ingredients, their nutrient values and their prices all come in together, and an import adds to what is there rather than replacing it: nothing you already entered is lost. It works in both directions, so you can pull the whole database out, edit it in bulk in a spreadsheet, and bring it back.

Most operations already keep their ingredient matrix and price lists in a spreadsheet, and that is the file to start from. It does not have to be tidied up first: FeedForté reads Excel files, CSV files or a table pasted straight out of a spreadsheet, works out for itself which row is the heading and what each column is, and matches your nutrient names onto the ones you already keep: offering to create any it does not recognise. You see every column and can correct or skip any of it before a single row is written, and an import only ever adds. Send a sample when you enquire if you would rather I looked at it with you.

Yes. Write to me and I will give you a demonstration. There is no form to fill in, no signup, no sales sequence afterwards and no obligation at the end of it.

I would far rather you judged this on a ration you already know the answer to than on a prepared dataset that proves nothing. Send one of your own formulas with your own prices, or bring it to the session, and watch it come out line by line, then compare the cost against what you run today.

Say in your first email which suits you: a live walkthrough where I drive and you ask whatever you want, the same session run on your own ingredient list and prices, or a recorded end-to-end run you can watch in your own time and show to whoever else has to approve the purchase.

Currency: yes. On first run it asks which currency you work in, or lets you type your own code, and that choice applies everywhere: on screen, in every report and in every exported file. Stock and demand can be viewed and entered in kilograms or in tonnes, and batch and bag weights are yours to set.

Units: nutrient units are free text, so whatever convention your reference uses, you type it and it appears throughout. Be clear about one thing: the unit is a label, not a conversion. Enter every ingredient’s value for a given nutrient on the same basis, because the software will not convert between two of them for you.

Language: the software’s own screens and reports are in English. Everything you type, ingredient names, formula names, plant details, remarks, appears exactly as you write it.