Well this answers any questions how their cubes are made:
http://manzanolafeeds.com/about_us.html
Also doubting my own statement above about buying a different Manzanola product. I swear they were the manufacturers of an alfalfa mix cube I used to buy, but I can’t find any reference to that. Must have been a similarly named company.
Or, they don’t make it any more.
Good to know about Dumor. I believe Standee only grows & manufactures their products in Idaho as an alternative
For historical context, 18 (maybe more) horses died of botulism linked to hay cubes in Southern California in 1989.
Actually, probably not. It is picked up and chopped into about 2" pieces and blown into wagons at higher percentage moisture than hay for baling. It is packed tight. It is heavy. It is moist. If left long enough in a wagon or giant pile, it will start to ensile itself because of the sheer weight of it. The fact that it goes through a blower means it’s easy to contaminate a load. Depending on how it’s treated after unloading - how many loads are mixed to come to the label’s nutrition consistency, etc. How long do piles sit before they go through the dryer?
Loose hay and loose chopped alfalfa are 2 very, very different things.
ETA - clicked your link and it seems that company uses large squares so 1 dead fox in one bale could be a source of a fair bit of contamination as it got chopped up and moved through the processing chain. So different than my explanation above, but similar too.
Does anyone know if alfalfa pellets are less likely to be affected? Does the heat in the extrusion process make a difference? Thank you.
That’s what I’ve been told. A vet told me that horses have fewer allergic reactions to pellets than to the corresponding baled hay or cubes.
That is very interesting. Thank you VERY much for sharing this.
Thanks for the update. I think of this thread and the poor horses who became ill and died every night when I pour boiling water on BP and alfalfa pellets, “what if, how much protein breakdown from further high heat, nah, that doesn’t matter it’s additional water and calories I’m after, but is it hot enough for long enough to kill stuff just in case, but pellets are safer, but, …” and on and on. LoL
I picked up two more bags of Top of the Rockies cubes this weekend, and when I asked the store staff if they had any bags recalled from the botulism scare, they just stared and had no idea what I was talking about. Fortunately, the ones they had on hand pre-date the bad batch (11/01/22), so I’m not worried about these and am currently feeding them, they smell great and horses are fine. I wonder if the distributors knew which batches went to which stores?
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