Feeding Facts

New Feeds Now at Your Co-op With the beginning of summer and the end of another school year, I hope everything is going well, you’re getting sufficient rain and the grass is green. While the need for animal feed is reduced during this time of the year, we continue to remain busy working on new products and programs to further benefit our customers. With this in mind, I would like to introduce four new products that are or will soon be available through your local Quality Co-op. The first new product is AFC Horizon Equine Minerals. While we all recognize the importance of a complete mineral and vitamin supplement, these important nutrients are sometimes overlooked when developing a complete feeding program. Horizon Equine Minerals are designed for horse owners who are feeding Horizon Horse Feeds. Even though most of our Horizon Horse Feeds contain minerals and vitamins, Horizon Equine Minerals will fill in the gaps to provide a superior mineral/vitamin program to your horse. While this product will mostly benefit horses that are being fed Horizon All-Grain 10% or Horizon All-Grain 11%, it will also benefit those being fed Horizon Excel, Horizon Champions Choice, Horizon Mare & Foal and Horizon Senior. This supplement not only contains macro minerals such as calcium, phosphorus, sodium, chloride, magnesium, potassium and sulfur, but it also contains micro minerals such as zinc, iron, copper, selenium, iodine and manganese. Horizon Equine Minerals also offers a complete vitamin mix containing Vitamins A, D and E along with the B Vitamins consisting of biotin, choline, niacin and riboflavin. Another benefit of this mineral is the addition of chelated minerals along with molasses to assure adequate consumption of the product. This product should be available to horse producers by the middle of June. Another new mineral product is AFC Apple Flavored Deer Mineral. This mineral will be available in 50 pound bags and will contain salt and calcium along with a high percentage of phosphorus and magnesium for antler development. This flavored supplement also contains adequate levels of trace minerals and vitamins to allow deer to function at the highest nutritional plane possible. Just as in horses, a complete mineral/vitamin supplement is required for deer to perform at an optimum level. As mentioned earlier, this supplement will be apple flavored to assure that deer are consuming sufficient amounts of the product to get the added benefits of a complete mineral and vitamin supplement. This product should be available by July 1. In our feed line, we have developed two new products that are both already available through your local Quality Co-op. The first is a 22% Mini Laying Pellet that is designed for laying hens that have a higher requirement for additional protein. The most common use of these pellets seems to be in the game bird area for those producers who own game hens. We are also seeing a use for this feed with producers who keep birds in cages and those who are looking for maximum egg production from their birds. Another possible benefit of this feed is it should reduce feather loss by providing additional levels of Methionine to your birds. This feed is a mini-pellet for use with smaller birds. The other new feed is T.P. Goat Feed. This 15% protein pelleted goat feed is high fiber with over 20% of the feed coming from alfalfa meal. This higher level of fiber will improve the overall digestive health of your goats without sacrificing growth and performance. It also contains additional levels of grain and a complete mineral/vitamin supplement to assist in the overall growth and performance of your goat herd. T.P. Goat Feed is medicated with an ionophore (Bovatec®) for feed efficiency and coccidiosis control. It is already in use on several farms and producers seem more than satisfied by the quality of the product and the performance of the feed. The final item I would like to discuss is not a feed, but a program. We have improved our Youth/Animal Scholarship Program. A new feature will be that FFA and 4-H members who show goats will now be able to participate. Additional rules have been implemented to help improve the overall quality and efficiency of the program. It offers students several choices when selecting products for their cattle, pig, sheep or goat program. Also added will be a rebate to your local FFA or 4-H chapter for every pound of approved feed that a student uses during the duration of their animal health program. Another change will be that the scholarship money will be set up in a trust fund for the student and upon high school graduation can be used to further their education whether it is college or technical/vocational school. We believe that these updates will improve a successful program that has already paid more than $10,000 in scholarship money since its inception. The new changes will be introduced this summer for students who will start their animal science program this fall. I hope that some of the ideas discussed in this article will benefit you in some manner. We are always looking to create markets for needed products and believe that the four new products, as well as the youth program, will be well received and offer the end user a quality product for a fair price. If I can ever be of assistance to you in any manner, please do not hesitate to contact me at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it . Until next month, when I hope we have plenty of moisture and a good first cutting of hay. Jimmy Hughes is AFC’s animal nutritionist.