Went last year, workshop is run by Purina Mills ( Animal Feeds) at their dealer locations. Mainly dealing with equine nutrition. company reps run the event. Worth going, met other horse owners in my area, company promo's also make it worthwhile to attend. visit website to find info in your area web page
Click on : HOW
Mark
All Three were valuable
1) Nutrition I pretty much knew about especially since I was taking care of a chronic founder horse - Diet is a big part of the problem with this horse. Nutrition was helpful with me knowing
Purina would meet my needs - after this workshop I switched over to Purina feeds.
2)Promo's and giveaways were good, my Daughter won a denim shirt & vet wraps, and I walked away with enough half price coupons to last me a month for feed and suppliments
3)It was also good to see local horse owners and compare our experiences about horses. Now they are not all strangers at a horse show
Interesting. We have found that over the last year, for some reason, we are not getting the results we were used to with many of the Purina products. Or maybe the better way of saying that is we were given a couple of bags of Nutrenas Empower to try and really like it. We moved over to Nutrena and are getting much better results with their Empower product. Starting about now through about Nov we have to work to keep the weight on with the workouts they tend to get and the Empower seems to keep the energy up without making them hot.
It's nice to see more competition in equine feed to keep things improving.
We have the Horse Expo out here every summer and its nice to run into good horseman from other disciplines and other areas.
We used that Empower for about a year. It really is good stuff. We switched to a new product that is called Pennwoods Equine. As good as the empower was I think this is even better. It's a special blend that has the fat and protein from the Empower but also has all of the nutritional products as well as Biotin. To keep my daughters barrel horses feet good we feed biotin. Now having it in conjuction with everything else is great.
I just got slapped in the face by some Purina products. Just this weekend I bought a pallet of Senior and when I got it home I couldn't bust the stuff with a hammer, like a 50# brick. Immediately took it back and couldn't find another bag among 20-something pallets at the coop that was right. Found 10 good bags at a small mom & pop feed store and paid throught the nose and I could tell it was old.
Then yesterday evening I opened one of 10 bags of Strategy I bought the same day and it was seriously trashed with a bright blue plastic that had been through the extruder. Every bag was like that and now I've got to take them back.
The store manager claimed Saturday he was going to send all of the Senior back to Purina and when I called about the Strategy today he'd already had complaints about it and hinted they were having problems with other Purina chows. He's promised to call me as soon as they get it straightened out. Kinda seems like some folks didn't get Christmas bonuses or something, I've never had the slightest issue with their products before but they'll only get one more chance with me.
So now I'm gunshy and wary of problems, what specific issues did you have Mark?
Mark , Richard
I"m in a slightly different situation, I board horses. I need a "BASIC" feed that is acceptable to all Horses/Boarders. I add suppliments to this basic feed as needed by the horse's activity or recommended by my vet. I also feed "requested feeds" by owners but do charge extra for this.
Three years ago I was having a local mill custom blend my feed, but the consistency/texture/color looked like it was changing with each bulk delivery. Then there was the worry of cross contamination/mixing with cow feed, since 90% of his business was dairy.
LazyJ
I have not experienced any problems with my purina feed or with my dealer , or have not heard of any problems with purina in my area! Could the problem be with the dealer and the way he "STORES" the feed before you buy it? I have learned the hard way that if not stored correctly it will ruin the feed
Richard,
Feet are such a deal breaker for sure. I looked on the web for Pennwoods. Is this it? http://www.pennwoods.com/products.htm If it is, which one are you using? My 4 year old is a bit knock kneed so we really try to stay proactive with preventative measures. He is so darn talented and cowey that we bought him. If Pennwoods has the same make up and is as consistent as Empower with the supplements I would sure make the switch.
Lazy J,
I think, like a lot of folks, we were sort of raised with Purina being the best. Over the last 3-4 years it seems like Purina has not kept up with the Equine industry. It was hard to move off of their product but we ran into a few of issues back to back. The first was some bad feed that the dealer was resistant to resolving. The second was feed availability – at various times we had to go to different dealers to find the same feed. They all said that sometimes it was hard to get feed all the time. We don’t like to switch feed very often so this is a problem. Third – Lack of communication about new or improved equine feed. I think other companies do a better job of listening and delivering to their customers.
In the last year we have found that Purina products we buy around the country have very different physical forms and the horses react to them differently. If we go to a show in NV, AZ, CA, TX or OK I would expect that the feed is the same. If the horses get hot one time and not the next, if they eat it one time and not the next if it smells differently from time to time, if it looks differently from time to time I am very suspicious.
What really tipped it was we got some Empower from Nutrena to try and the horses took to it. They seemed to have better stamina without being hot and the product was consistent. It’s a bit more than Purina in our area and a lot harder to get but so far (have to check out Pennwoods) it’s the best. Nutrena even has a program where one of their reps will come out and analyze your forage so you know how best to supplement or feed(you might check into this and see if its valuable to you. It seems like that would be a nice feature to share with your customers). I think you can buy Nutrena in bulk but I might be wrong on that.
At the last Horse Expo I asked the Purina people about these issues and I got serious attitude. I am not the best rider out there nor do we have the most horses, at the same time, our horses each cost more than any vehicle or trailer we have ever owned (including our new Dodge/Cummins) and we center a lot of our time and energy around the horses so the last thing I wanted was attitude from some sales puke who has no good answer. If you can’t support your product, as a factory rep, then I will move on.
I don’t normally talk much about it since most people just blindly trust Purina but I did mention this to a feed store clerk when we were in So Cal and he said that they no longer push Purina since it was bought by, I think he said, Nestle and the quality has dropped. My experiences, as a scientific sample of one [img]/forums/images/icons/grin.gif[/img] seem to support that.
Anyway…..it works for us and we keep looking for a better solution.
<font color="blue"> </font color>"Since most people just blindly trust Purina"
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Mark
Last time I looked (HA,HA) I was not Blind! and I was not raised to THINK that purina was the best. But I was raised to "THINK" for myself. If , and/or, when Purina does not work for my situation I will change/adapt as needed.
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