LMF Feed and hay analysis
I definitely am not an expert on horse nutrition. In so many aspects of my life, I need to rely on others who are experts in their field and I need to put my trust in them. Half the battle is finding someone with knowledge and the ability to help you. If you just scroll through any horse catalog, there is a dazzling amount of horse supplements that all claim to be absolutely necessary and crucial for your horse! Of course I need Vitamin D (click, in cart), my horse’s feet are cracking, why wouldnt I need My-T-Gud-Hoof?? (click, in cart), and yes I did see a fly today (click 25 pounds of garlic in cart). Next thing you know, your cart has double digits in the little basket in the upper right corner, and you are broke.
Instead of trusting the advertisments, I choose to trust LMF feed. I have used it since 1996 when I moved my horses in with Amy Tryon. I love that they are a ‘small batch’ company, my words, not theirs. Which to me means that they are local enough to adjust the nutrients every year to suit the soils in our immediate area. Its not a world conglomerate that is looking at the global horse needs, but a local company that is looking at MY horse’s needs in the Pacific Northwest.
Harris Statema is the local rep that I have worked with since 2007, when we moved to Polestar Farm. Harris has decades of experience first as a ‘hay guy’, and I have leaned on him several times to rescue me from bad hay experiences. He brings a lot of knowledge to his job as an LMF rep.
I wanted to share with you my latest nutrition work up that I did with Harris last month. First, he comes over and cores a bunch of bales to get a good random selection of the hay we recently bought. I purchased 24 tons of it, so I have quite a long term commitment to that hay! He sends off the samples to the state for analysis, and then a couple of weeks later, he comes over to have a meeting with me to explain how my hay works with LMF grain for my overall barn’s health.
This first graph is a snapshot of my hay. It is a second cutting timothy, which works well for me. I have enough thoroughbreds who have utter contempt for first cutting anything, as it pokes their tender, princess mouths. They deem it suitable for bedding only! Overall: My hay falls in the best range for moisture, protein, starch/carbs, and digestibility. The graph shows the amounts of nutrients are all in the good range.
Second graph: Blue lines show how the nutrient levels are changed by adding 1 pount of LFM Super Supplement G to the diet per day. You can see how all the nutrient amounts went at or above the 100% suggested required amount.
Most importantly, with Super Supplement added to my hay, my horses get a very usable 1.53 calcium to 1.0 phosphorous ratio (commonly written as 1.53: 1.0 cal to phos) . This is one of the more critical nutrient comparisons for horse health, and just do a quick google search to really satisfy yourself as to the reasons why! We also add a flake of alfalfa per day to our horse’s diet which bumps up the calcium a bit to even better overall ratio.
This blog is to share with you how simple and easy Harris made this process for me. Not only was it nice to have an expert explain it all to me in person, he also gave me about 4 sheets of information that I could read up later for better understanding. Even if you dont buy 25 tons of hay at a time, you might still find it useful to have the peace of mind that you actually KNOW what you are feeding your horse, and then you wont unnecessarily buy crates of supplements for your horse that they don’t need!