It is rewarding to have helped develop products that have changed the industry and how people feed their animals
Profile
Education
University of Illinois
Background
His focus revolves around difficult to make feeds.
“I work with nutritionists to develop new products and processes to help our customers and their animals,” says Lanter. “My role is to find product solutions for problematic scenarios and challenges from the field.”
Lanter’s research areas of expertise and interests include:
- Extrusion
- Pelleting
- Flaking
- Agglomeration
- Gum technology
- Palatability
- Packaging
Using these techniques and technologies, Lanter has helped develop a variety of feed products and has 30 patents.
One of the most unique products he developed is Hydration Hay®. Horses typically decrease water consumption when traveling or when stressed. Hydration Hay® makes traveling and watering horses easy. A 2 pound block of compressed grass and alfalfa hay absorbs 10 pounds of water and encourages horses to drink more water.
Purina® Amplify® Supplement and Propel® Energy Nugget are two other accomplishments Lanter is proud of. “I was responsible for much of the development work and was able to patent these high fat products. When we started, these levels of fat were almost ‘impossible’ to put into a dry feed. It was also known that you could not feed high levels of fat to horses or cows. Now it is a common practice,” he says.
Lanter played a pivotal role in the development of Wind and Rain® Cattle Minerals and UltraCare® Gel, two of Purina Animal Nutrition’s flagship products.
He also organizes quality control double checks on a variety of feeds. Each quarter, he conducts “feed judging” where bags of feed from Purina feed plants across the nation are evaluated for consistency. “It’s our responsibility to make sure our customers are getting the same product every time, no matter where it was manufactured,” says Lanter.
Lanter lives on a small hobby farm in Illinois where he has conducted controlled experiments for Purina on chickens, bass and bluegill. He earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of Illinois and master’s degree from the Southern Illinois University.