I am currently feeding my horse nutrena empower balance and I came across tribute’s ration balancer. I also saw that it has a joint supplement in it too. Just looking for reviews on this feed since the price is about $5 more a bag.
Love it! 
Have switched my horses over to the Tribute feeds and cant say enough good things about how good they are all doing on it
A really first rate feed and the company is terrific to deal with as well. Any questions I have are answered in great and concise detail
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I use EK and love it. I researched the EK plus, but you had to feed (and I can’t remember exactly) two or three pounds to get the recommended amount of joint supplement. Email them to confirm. So I just use the EK and add my own as I don’t want my two horses on more than one lb per day.
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I use regular Essential K in the summer and really like it. It’s been a long time since I looked at the Plus, but I believe Jackie & Starlette above is correct. The amount in a pound is (or used to be) pretty small, and it would be more economical to buy a separate joint supplement if you don’t need 2+ lbs of RB.
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There are a lot of folks on this board who love Tribute. I did not have a good experience with it. My horses had less of a glow and were less thrifty when the barn switched from Gro N Win to Essential K. They also started getting minor skin funk, which I hadn’t had a problem with in YEARS.
Plus, I was really peeved when I contacted the company multiple times for nutritional info and got no response.
Like I said, others have had better experiences (including in the contact department), but I was just not impressed.
I started off feeding my two the Essential K plus, but it quickly became apparent that my pony needed less of it than required to get the proper amount of the joint supplements for his weight. Because of this it was more economical to switch to the regular Essential K and add MSM separately. I’m really happy with it overall though - my horses look great.
Take this with a grain of sale though - options for ration balancers in my area are limited so this is the only one I have tried so far.
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All 3 of my horses look fantastic on it - a moderate keeper 16 hh Friesian/TB, an air fern 14 y/o Appendix that had to lose a ton of weight when I got her, and a 19 y/o Appy with Cushings.
I was able to stop giving the Appendix her expensive hoof supplement and her hoof quality is still great. Everyone has shiny, smooth coats and good topline. I looked very carefully at the joint supplement additives and I would never pay what it would cost to get those same ingredients in a separate supplement for three horses. But incorporated into the Essential K Plus, it is costing an extra $10/month per horse so it is totally worth it.
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Wow! That was fast! So many replies. Thank you for all of the feedback I have never fed tribute before so I wanted some extra feedback. My horse gets 2-3 pounds a/day so the plus might be worth the extra cost. I guess I will just calculate the difference and see where that gets me. I do have to say though that I have found the ration balancer to be more economical then supplementing multiple multivitamins, minerals, and other nutrients. I think empower balance is a decent ration balancer but it is very dry and at $26/per 40 pound bag I am looking at other options. Plus, most companies by me don’t carry it.
I couldn’t supplement a joint supplement separately for the cost of feeding Essential K GC.
It has also been more cost effective in my area than Gro N Win.
I have always been lucky to email Dan Burke, the PhD nutritionist and had a reply email in under 24 hours. Last time my friend sent an email, he called her instead in a couple of hours. I thought that was pretty cool.
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I have two on it and am very happy. Both have plenty of energy and are shiny and fat. The the joint supplement part is fine for preventative levels, according to my vet.
I have spoken with Tribute’s nutritionist and was very impressed with him-much moreso than other feed company reps I have spoken to. My horses look great on their feeds.
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I feed this and add K finish for fat. I really like it, my hard keeper does not, however. After my feed people deliver my Tribute I have to sneak to Family Farm and buy her Ultium and beet pulp!
I’ve not used the Plus, but my gelding did really well on the original Essential K until he needed more calories for the amount of work he was doing (went from light basic training to gearing up for endurance rides). I switched him to a couple of the other formulas before settling on the one that worked best for him (Kalm Ultra). Friends used various other formulas for their horses and they all did really well on them.
Our guys are now on Purina feeds due to a change in barns where we can’t provide our own, but otherwise we’d all still be feeding Tribute feeds. When they all move to the farm we’re buying this spring, everyone will go back on Tribute feeds.
All of the horses in my barn are on one or other Tribute feed. So far I have fed Kalm Ultra, EZ, Essential K and K Finish. Very impressed and happy with the results. We have a retired founder pony that I switched to Essential K, MSM and a bit of beet pulp. She had a bad patch a little while ago (weather related, I am sure) but other than that she has been much improved since the switch. I have another easy keeper pony on it and I feed it together with a bit of EZ to a young horse.
[QUOTE=Justice;7440817]
I feed this and add K finish for fat. I really like it, my hard keeper does not, however. After my feed people deliver my Tribute I have to sneak to Family Farm and buy her Ultium and beet pulp![/QUOTE] Try the Kalm Ultra. I have a hard keeper on Kalm Ultra, K Finish and beet pulp.
I love the Tribute! My babies get Tribute Growth, and when they need a little extra for weight gain I give them K Finnish. Im going to try the BOSS as well to see if they like it… I’ve looked at the Essential K compaired to the Growth and I don’t see the point of paying more for it… you have to feed about the same amount as the growth and the growth is a bit cheaper. Overall very happy with this feed though!
[QUOTE=Mozart;7441343]
Try the Kalm Ultra. I have a hard keeper on Kalm Ultra, K Finish and beet pulp.[/QUOTE]
Thank you Mozart, I will try it!
All I feed is Tribute. It is my top feed. I have everyhorse on Essential K as a top dressing to another Tribute Feed. I have seen results like no other. IMO
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[QUOTE=Mozart;7441343]
Try the Kalm Ultra. I have a hard keeper on Kalm Ultra, K Finish and beet pulp.[/QUOTE]
I have two hard keepers on the Ultra and am very happy with it, and they love to eat it. As a bonus the molasses-y oil coating is great for grabbing powdered supplements.
I have my non-hard keeper on the Kalm and EZ, and if he porks up this spring he’ll go on the Essential K.
I know this is an older thread but thought I might get comments from people who previously commented. I have been feeding Essential K to all 16 head on my place and been amazed with the results. I switched to Tribute from Triple Crown because the Tribute dealer is about 30 miles closer. I had some problems with strange things in my bags- slick and greasy clumps, clumps as hard as concrete, and huge pellets 6x the normal size. The customer service people at Kalmbach were horrible at first, I finally got punted to a person who cared. This evening I opened a bag of Essential K and it reeked of DMSO. Has anybody else had this problem?
^^^ That is truly weird your experiences your comments and experiences with Kalmbach …
I am able to get hold of our rep literally within an hour or less with any concerns I have.
I am able to get hold of the top people at Kalmbach if I have needed to do so for any reason and they are beyond prompt and caring about whatever I want to discuss with them
If I leave something “with them” to investigate for me, they get back to me promptly without fail with their findings.
I did have an issue with several bags of their feed a few months ago. It was definitely “off” when I opened the bag. It turns out it was a local feed store problem and not a manufacturing problem. The bags I ended up with got “lost in the shuffle” at the feed store level for a good 8 or so months and one of the feed store staff found them in the back, didn’t check date codes and delivered them to me. Tribute and the feed store both apologized profusely, made a special run out to me to deliver me fresh feed and gave me complimentary bags for the inconvenience. I couldn’t ask for anything more from either of them. Mistakes happen. It was the feed stores fault and not Tribute. It was caught and rectified and life went on …
Perhaps the same thing has happened with the bags of feed you say smell like DMSO. Would be a good idea to contact them with the date codes on the bottom of the bag and see when it was manufactured
As an aside, I worked with the grocery industry for years exporting their products globally and sometimes screw ups occur with the date codes because their staff at the DC’s simply miss them and cereal or crackers or whatever end up on store shelves that shouldn’t be there and should have been pitched months ago. Its not the manufacturers fault - its the store level and their DC’s and staff but I found in 100% of the cases, everyone worked together quickly to rectify the issue and in most cases it was virtually a seamless fix with the customers not even being aware that it had occurred at all …
