Freeze-Dried Pet Food Company Expanding in Greensburg – Inside INdiana Business

GREENSBURG, Ind. - A Greensburg-based manufacturer of freeze-dried dog and cat food and other pet treats is investing $50 million to build a new production facility in Decatur County and add 50 jobs.

Shepherd Boy Farms, which is celebrating 10 years in business this year, said the 100,000- square-foot plant will expand its production capacity and co-manufacturing capabilities to meet growing demand.

Founder and CEO Ashton Hood said the new facility, combined with the company’s current 75,000-square-foot location will allow for the production of more than 20 million pounds of freeze- dried pet food annually.

In an interview with Inside INdiana Business, Hood said the new facility will benefit the company in many ways. “The obvious one [is] more production,” he said. “It’s going to allow us to make more unique products, more shapes, more consistencies, more options, instead of just being kind of the same as what everyone else is in the freeze-dried aspect of what we can produce. It’ll give us so many more capabilities.”

Shepherd Boy Farms started out as a goat farm in Indianapolis, and Hood said he was
approached by a local pet food company that wanted to buy raw goat’s milk from him.

He said the idea to shift into making pet food products came from that customer who espoused the benefits of goat’s milk for cats and dogs.

“They were telling me how great it was,” he said. “It’s going to help digestion. It’s going to help allergy relief. They just went down the list.” Not fully believing the hype, Hood said he started feeding goat’s milk to his own dog, who started seeing relief from some of his own ailments after a week, which led him to pivot into the pet food space.

Now, Shepherd Boy Farms sells freeze-dried goat’s milk, as well as cat and dog food, and treats using a range of products such as beef, bison, chicken, cod, pork, turkey, kangaroo, salmon, whitefish, tuna, alligator, minnows, duck, and an array of fruits and vegetables.

Hood said the current facility in Greensburg handles the entire production process.
“We get the raw material in. We can dice it, form it, mix it, blend it, grind it, whatever is needed for the application,” he said. “Then we do all the freeze dry and do all the packaging, so we’re a start- to-finish operation.”

In addition to Shepherd Boy Farms’ own products, which are sold on its website and other online retailers like Chewy and Amazon, the company also provides co-manufacturing for private label customers.

The new facility is being designed with state-of-the-art dicing and proprietary freeze-drying equipment to further support its manufacturing operation.

Shepherd Boy Farms currently employs about 35 people, most of whom are in Greensburg with some sales employees in California, Hood said. He said he’s confident the company will be able to find the workforce it needs for the new jobs.

“It’s going to be very robotic, very automatic at the new facility. So it’s going to take a higher- caliber operator to do some of these things,” he said. “So I have a good feeling being able to do that.”

Construction of the facility is underway, and the company aims to begin production in the spring of 2026. Hood said he’s glad to continue growing in the Hoosier State.

“We love supporting Indiana,” he said. “I’m a born and raised Hoosier. We’re glad that we get to keep everything in Indiana and just hope we can be a benefit and a help to the community. So we’re just really excited about what we’ve been blessed to do here.”

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