Food Woes

If you own horses, you likely know how infuriatingly difficult it can be to find the right feed.

I’m feeding 4 horses with wildly different needs. Newboy is prone to ulcers and becomes food aggressive when his stomach hurts. Jack is huge and a hard keeper. Beau is 28 and has all the digestive issues of an older horse. Spots gets fat on air and water and, as a pony, is prone to founder.

One size fits all is hard to find.

I like keeping everyone on the same feed because it’s just easier, but that perfect feed is hard to find. A feed to meet all four horses needs must be high fat, forage based, low NSC and, most importantly, available in my very rural area. I thought I had the perfect solution in Triple Crown Senior feed. It’s 10% fat, grain free, and 11% NSC. Everybody looks great on it and Newboy doesn’t fly into a murderous rage at mealtime.

A few months ago I began to notice whole oats and corn popping up in the feed. I didn’t think much of it, that can happen sometimes in the mill and since I buy 7 bags a week I might have just hit a bad run. But it continued. Every single bag I bought that month had whole oats and corn in it. I emailed Triple Crown because I had concerns about contamination from other feed. Monensin is an additive in cattle feed that is extremely toxic to horses and cross-contamination in horse feed has resulted in the death barns full of horses. I wanted to be certain this mill did not produce cattle feeds.

Corn and oats in my “grain free” feed.

Their response was to say that it happens sometimes, the mill does not process feeds containing monensin and here’s a coupon for a free bag.

At the time, that was good enough for me. I assumed the problem would be resolved. Unfortunately, every single bag I’ve opened since then has still had whole oats and corn in it. Today, however, was the final nail in the coffin.

That’s right, metal. In my feed. And it’s clearly been mixed in there, because it’s covered in molasses.

Needless to say, I will be discontinuing my use of Triple Crown products. I did email pictures to the sales rep I spoke with earlier last year so that they know about the issue and they offered me “replacement bags”, but at this point there’s really nothing they can do to keep me on as a customer. The hunt is on for a new feed. I just hope I don’t end up having to buy four different feeds again!