It's a long boring story but I was wanting to try my horse on the Nutrena safechoice perform (again) I hasn't fed it in a while because the feedstore quit carrying the perform, but I will say while he was on it, I wasn't disappointed... he seemed to do very well with a good amount of energy. Anyway, I got to thinking about if Nutrena was a safe thing to feed, with medicated cattle feed being a concern. I emailed the company and I thought I'd share it here what they told me. I know the feed will be coming from Temple, TX Plant that will be carried in the Closest TSC. My TSC is actually really good about keeping their feeds rotated and having fresh feeds. I check the dates from there.

Atleast they admit that SOME of their mills do but with strict protocols. Looks like the one you would use does not. Just watch the tags and make sure they all come from that mill. I'm in CA and just for fun I look at tags. Some of the time the feeds come from N CA and others AZ. CO, etc. just depends on the load I guess. 

I'm in CO and we have a Cargill plant where I live. When I went in there a few years ago, I got that exact same speech. But if you ask to see those "Good Manufacturing Practices"...you get a deer in the headlight look. They also DO have ionophores on site....but it's only used in bulk feed so it's ok. Plus they run a bunch of chicken feed through to clear the lines. 

I certainly didn't feel very confident after leaving there that things were as clear cut as they claim. 

Yeah,thats a BIG NO for me.

I don't have the feed at this time. I emailed her back and asked for more information,  so she only mentioned monesin.... I'm not exactly schooled on all that lingo but I asked about ionophores in general, so monesin is an ionophore right? What about lascaloid? I bought a bag of chicken feed from nutrena last week and dumped the bag into the barrel and it was almost all powder ... I emailed them about that issue too. I really like their chick starter because it's not medicated and my chicks are usually vaccinated for coccidiosis so they can't have any medicated feed. I wanted to give them a chance to make this right.. my chickens won't eat powder. I pulled tags from all the chicken feed available to me locally and nutrena is actually the nicer feed with nice levels of certain things and lacking a bunch of "fillers"  my horse got out of his pen one night and helped himself to some bluebonnet medicated chick starter... I about lost my mind over that one. He ended up being ok with no side effects but after that incident, I swore off medicated feed being on my place and I had my husband add a gate with a secure latch that is LOCKED every evening where we keep the chicken feed,, I also use bungee cords over the barrels because I has a run in with some raccoons...so that won't happen again... accidents happen, kids forget to latch gates etc etc...  I'm with those that aren't feeling very confident in Nutrenas response about the safety of their feeds .... one quick Google search or Facebook search brings up a bunch of scary stories and lawsuits and investigations about it. I know plenty of people that feed it and love it... but what's that saying??? Ignorance is bliss.... I didn't know much about anything in regards to medicated cattle feed being an issue in horse feed until I started hanging out here many moons ago... I even use to feed Patriot by ADM before I found out about them. I remember our one good horse started acting off and just weird ... never did put the 2 together until after the fact. He ended up being ok but it was a struggle to get him figured out ... even the vets never thought about the feed being the culprit ... looking back, I wish I knew what I know now.  So I decided to just go ahead and ask the question, but based on just that info, I'm not buying it right now... unless she comes back with more to convince me it's 100% safe from that. 

Yeah ... can we have the list of which plants DO manufacture medicated cattle feed then?? Lol! She said, just a few.... hmmmmm...

We have choices when it comes to feeding our horses. Every mill that has had issues with medicated feed comtamination in horse feed has had the exact same safety protocols that were listed above, and screwed it up. That is human nature to make a mistake, get in a hurry, or simply not care or understand as a minimum wage employee how important this is. The only way to be safe from inonophore contamination that is damaging to our horses in the slightest amount is to only feed products from feed mills that have no medications on the property. PERIOD!

You said this so well!!!! I have been feeding BlueBonnet feeds for ever it seems and I have never heard of any issues and will feed BlueBonnet for another for ever, lol. I have never changed feed companys except for when we first moved up here to this area and nobody around carried it so I did have to change for a few years untill someone decided to become a dealer here in my area and when I found this new feed store that just opened up I was so stinking happy !!!!! I fed it for years when I was in Edinburg Texas and now here finally.. I'm one that never strays from something that works for my horses.. 

Yes, lasolocid, rumensin and monensin are all ionophores. 
This time of year is when the risk is greatest since it gets mixed in cattle feed in the winter months. It takes as little as a teaspoon of it mixed through a ton of feed to affect a horse. 

***You need to make sure that the factory is designated ionophore "free" (no ionophores used on site) , not ionophore "safe"(ionophores used but precautions are taken). 

Yes, and I have test results from a university showing that the feed I fed was contaminated and harmed and killed horses.  Mine lived, the people down the road, theirs did not.  And it was from a nationally made brand.  

The last email I just received from this person, totally ignored my questions about ionophores, I get the feeling they want me to go away with my concerns. How hard is it to address the questions about it? The entire email sent back to me is  about my chicken feed concerns and I got the 1-2 here's a number to call for quality control and let them deal with it... I feed over 200 chickens, probably peanuts to bigger farms, but still I feel blown off... that's the end of that... I won't be purchasing more chicken feed NOR the horse feed...  when I get that kind of response from any company, I drop them... Bluebonnet is indeed a safe company but there was a few concerns I had about certain ingredients I saw that were in my feed of choice. But I will say, they've always been pretty fast to respond to any questions I had whether it's horse feed or chicken feed and try to help me figure some of my issues out by offering alternatives or a farm visit to see what's going on. Pretty transparent company, I think. I feel a little slighted by Nutrena at the moment. 

I don't know if you can get Bryant feed in your area, but they don't make any medicated feed at their mill.  My horses have always done well on their feed. 

I'm not sure if that's available or not. I know there's a store in my town that sells Thomas Moore horse feed and it's pretty inexpensive, I sometimes buy their scratch grains for my chickens and it's always super clean and not dusty, I noticed their layer crumbles and pellets have their G/A and ingredients printed directly on the bag and no feed tag. The feedstore owner convinced me to try Thomas Moore feed for my hens called scratch n more ... well it was a very pretty, clean dust free feed, my chickens ate every bit of the scratch and left the "more" in the feed pan.... its a vitamin mineral protein pellet... my hens prefer crumble to pellets , I emailed the company about their milling and never got a response from anyone so I moved on. Who knew feeding chickens could almost be as complicated as feeding horses! Scratch grains is like chicken crack around here ... they live for it, they will follow me everywhere until I throw them some... it sounds like a stampede behind me sometimes! They had me cornered in here the other day because they all followed me in the feed room haha!