McCalla’s Feed began with a mobile feed grinder on the back of a truck that Ralph McCalla would drive from farm to farm in western Washtenaw County.

Fifty years later, McCalla’s Feed Service has a main building and a retail shop, a grinding room, and several pole barns that can be seen from the family farmhouse at 12875 Old US-12, just outside Chelsea.

And Saturday, the family business will celebrate its special milestone with an open house from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. McCalla's will host representatives from its four main feed companies and a pond company.

“We used to have a big pancake breakfast, a customer appreciation day, the first Saturday in March,” said Elaine McCalla, Ralph’s widow. “We’d serve 400 to 500 people.”

But as large farming operations were divided and sold for developments and smaller farms emerged, McCalla’s Feeds changed with the times and added dog, bird and cat feeds to their inventory that offers sheep, pig, horse, goat, chicken and duck feed.

“The whole dynamic has changed,” said Sue McCalla, whose late husband, Ken, bought the company from his father in 1990.

In 1961, Ralph McCalla began the business with a mobile feed grinder that was on the back of a truck and one of the first farms to utilize it was the Noah Farm, said Elaine McCalla.

McCalla’s Mobile Feed Service went from farm to farm. “It was equipped with a corn sheller and an unloading system,” she said.

And although she wasn’t involved in the actual making of the feed, Elaine McCalla, now 89, kept the company books.

In 1971, Ralph’s son, Ken McCalla, convinced him that the business needed a larger place.

“When Ken was still in high school, he talked his father into building a building,” said Sue McCalla.

Today, the main building and retail space is about 4,500 square feet, while the grinding room is about 1,300 square feet.

Sue and Ken McCalla were high school sweethearts from the time she was 15 years old. He was 16 at the time.

“We shared a birthday,” Sue McCalla said.

She took over the business in 2005 when her husband, who was also the Chelsea Community Fair Board president, died. But throughout the years, there’s been continuity. Ron Stoffer has been the feed business manager for the last 18 years.

“He manages all the day-to-day business,” Sue McCalla said, but we talk every day and discuss any big decisions.

“We are still here and hope to be here for a long time and keep this business in the family,” she said.

Lisa Allmendinger is a reporter with AnnArbor.com. She can be reached at lisaallmendinger@annarbor.com. For more Chelsea stories, visit our Chelsea page.