We sometimes act like companies that “spin off” from research at UW-Madison are a new idea, something that only takes place in a petri dish in a research park.
Lyle Hill started his “spin off” during the depths of the Great Depression, taking the vitamin research being done at the ag school and combining it with his love of farming. Hill whirled vitamins and cattle feed together in a mixer at his Fitchburg farm, and gave birth to Vita Plus, a company that today does more than $100 million a year in feed sales across the Upper Midwest.
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