Newsdate: Wed 25, Feb 2015 - 7:38 am
Location: LANCASTER, Pennsylvania

The name of Bluebonnet® Feed’s newest equine product says it all – Performance Plus Complete. Developed to meet the high demands of performance horses, Performance Plus Complete is a large, 5/16” pellet that is fortified with vitamins and minerals, but the bonus is the fact it can be fed to horses of any age or activity level including pregnant and lactating mares.

An alternative to a hay diet for horses

The feed designed to meet the nutritional needs of every type of horse is simplifying horsemen’s lives by eliminating the guesswork and waste associated with feeding hay.

This complete feed can nourish horses in different stages of life or training regimens. It is a high-fiber, alfalfa-based product that is designed to replace all or some of the forage in a horse’s diet so horsemen don’t have to worry about wasting hay or testing every load to make sure that it is meeting the nutritional needs of the herd.

“Many horse owners are faced with the challenge of finding a consistent supply of quality hay -- not just consistency in availability, but more importantly consistency in nutrients,” said Jyme Nichols, MS, who is an animal nutritionist and Bluebonnet Feeds’ director of Technical Services.

“Large volumes of hay can be hard to store, feed and manage. Performance Plus Complete is a readily available, consistent alternative to trying to source your own hay. Performance Plus can be used as a total forage replacement or as a forage extender to increase the life of a barn’s hay supply by feeding a portion of the roughage in the diet as hay and the rest as Performance Plus Complete.”

Two key components set Bluebonnet® Performance Plus Complete apart from other hay cubes or forage extenders. First is the fact that Performance Plus Complete is fortified with all vitamins and minerals necessary for a performance horse, not just “some” of the necessary nutrients.

When fed as a total diet, Performance Plus Complete satisfies every nutrient requirement set forth by the National Research Council for horses. Second is the open-label, locked formula policy that Bluebonnet® stands for on all equine feeds. Bluebonnet® Feeds does not use collective terminology (by-product labeling) on tags and the formulas do not change based on commodity market prices.

“This is crucial to ensuring customers get the same feed in every bag,” Nichols said. “A completely consistent diet is very important for the sensitive digestive system of the horse.”

Nichols also reminds all horse owners to offer plain white salt and clean fresh water at all times.

“Each horse is an individual and, therefore may require a tailored feeding approach,” Nichols said. “Horses that have been on a long stem roughage (hay) diet may take longer to transition to a total pelleted diet and may do best when a few pounds of hay are offered with the Performance Plus Complete.

Horses with extremely high calorie requirements may need to be supplemented with a few pounds of a high calorie feed such as Intensify® Omega Force. For specific questions regarding your program, please contact Bluebonnet Feeds.”

National Cutting Horse Hall of Fame Rider inductee Ed Dufurrena, who has won more than $1 million in NCHA competitions, has a full gamut of horses at his Texas ranch from cutting horses in training to broodmares and growing horses.

The Dufurrena family has been successful in the arena while feeding Bluebonnet® Performance Plus Complete and finds the no-mess, ease of feeding to be a bonus.

“We have fed Performance Plus exclusively for the past four years to more than 70 head of horses year-round ranging from pregnant mares to world-class cutting horses, and I can't express how happy we are with the results,” Dufurrena said.

“As a professional in this business, I’m looking for a consistent product with a stable price that meets my nutritional requirements that I can get all the time. I know that I can get the same product in January as I do in July and I know that it meets all of my horses’ nutritional needs without me having to test every bale of hay that comes into my barn and constantly adjusting supplements because all the guesswork has been taken out."

“One thing that makes it really practical is weighing the feed to adjust intake for different scenarios. If I have a 3-year-old that is working hard and needs to put on weight, I can feed him a higher volume than the older horse that tends to stay fat,” he adds.

“I can manage their consumption almost to the ounce. That’s hard to do with other products. Another great benefit is the fact that I have cut my waste down to zero. When I fed hay, there was at least a 20 percent loss because it got knocked on the ground and ended up not being eaten. Now I have 100 percent manageability and zero waste so obviously I’m a big fan because we’ve had a lot of success with it since our horses have been on it.”

The proof is in the trophy case.

"Since we’ve been on this feed, I’ve won two National Cutting Horse Association World Champion Stallion titles and my son and my daughter have both won American Quarter Horse Association World Champion Amateur Cutting titles.”

Performance Plus Complete is available through any authorized Bluebonnet Feeds dealer. Visit http://bluebonnetfeeds.com/ to find your nearest dealer.

About Bluebonnet Feeds:

For more than 30 years, Bluebonnet Feeds has manufactured a wide array of high-quality equine feed products, and has recently expanded its line of premium equine supplements through the Stride® brand. Using quality ingredients and specialized milling process, all of Bluebonnet’s equine feeds are carefully manufactured at a single mill in Ardmore, Oklahoma. For more information on Bluebonnet Feeds or Stride Supplements, go to www.bluebonnetfeeds.com.