I have one horse on Triple Crown Senior and one on Triple Crown Balancer. For some reason my local feed stores have been sold out of one or the other a lot lately. Conversely, everybody seems to have Tribute in stock in spades. Has anybody switched from Triple Crown to Tribute? Pre-pandemic my horses were all on Buckeye, and then that got hard to find in my area. I much prefer how my horses look on Triple Crown vs how they looked on Buckeye, and they seem to prefer the taste, but I don’t love having to drive an hour to find it.
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I personally do not like Tribute brand. I do like Purina Enrich ration balancer and feed other Purina products as well.
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I used Tribute for a while but my horses never did that great on it.
There is a local dressage barn that feeds it and her horses look great on it, so idk.
Tribute is a great price point compared to other feeds.
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If you contact Triple Crown Customer Service, they will help you source it. Triple Crown actually worked with my local TSC to make sure that the feed I use stays in stock.
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I’ve always had better luck with Triple Crown than Tribute with my guy, but I know plenty of horses that are on Tribute (mostly Essential K and/or Kalm N EZ) that do great. My horse has been on both of those feeds in the past and did fine, but he does better on TC’s ration balancer and every horse I’ve ever had has done well on TC Senior.
I’m not feeding either brand at the moment as I seem to prefer the “mad scientist” approach to feeding my horse a million scoops of this and that, but if I were to decide to simplify, I’d go with TC.
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I feed both. Triple Crown Senior and Tribute Wholesome Blends ration balancer. I like both brands, but they do not really have a TC Senior dupe.
From what I’ve gathered from nutritionists, Triple Crown is considered a premium brand, meaning high quality ingredients. Even better if they are made in a Purina facility. Tribute is considered to be more of a medium quality brand. I don’t have any independent information on this, but it’s been consistent from nutritionists who are not brand reps.
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I’ll be the odd man out - I’ve had better success with Tribute than TC. I really wanted to like TC Senior since it gets rave reviews here but I was dumping so much of it into my horses and they just looked meh. Switched to Tribute Kalm N Ez, horses bloomed on less. More recently, I fed the wholesome balancer which I really liked. Tribute can be bought from Chewy with free shipping to your house or boarding barn which is incredibly convenient.
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I had mine on TC Senior and TC Ration Balancer for a while…they were fine but both hated the ration balancer. We had to special order the balancer anyway.
Then discovered some allergies with my mare, so the best option was to go to with Tribute Wholesome Blends ration balancer. My mare looks fantastic on it…and I like the look and texture of the feed way more than both the TC feeds I used. I can also get it from Chewy, so no worry about having to special order (and it is cheaper via Chewy than local ordered).
My old retired gelding (who had eaten Purina Sr most his life and tolerated TC Sr but refused the TC balancer) did not like the Tribute balancer at all. So, I just go to Tractor Supply and buy him a bag of Purina Sr and he’s a happy camper!
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I feed the wholesome blend as well. I’ve been super happy with that line from Tribute. Historically I’ve fed Seminole and TC but I don’t believe either have anything similar to the wholesome blend.
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Many of the PhD and MSc nutritionists I know scratch their head over how Tribute can claim to be such quality, and still be priced as low as they are. It does seem like an inordinately high number of horses don’t do well on Tribute, despite what things should be doing on paper.
Yes, I know, no feed works for all horses, there are horses who don’t do well on TC products, whether the Balancer or Senior (the most commonly used ones, IME).
But Tribute seems to be much more skewed in the % of horses who don’t do well on their feeds.
Chestnut tribute EK ration balancer only 17 yrs old
Dark bay Kalm EZ + Top dress EK, 29 yr old ppid tb.
The whole farm looks similar. I will say I am not happy with the recent changes to Tribute feeds. They have removed flax and a few other changes.
But I think you could do ok with tribute feed if you are struggling to source Triple Crown. Reaching out to TC maybe to express your challenges in finding it might help your supply options?
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Similar experience here.
I had decent success with Purina (canadian version) in the sense that horses looked good, but not great.
Switched to Tribute, most of mine get 1 lb or so of Essential K and are absolutely glowing. Looking fabulous, including the retired ones.
My one “hard keeper” (aka actually needs feed, a ration balancer is not enough) gets Tribute Resolve and is glowing on it. They’re looking great, staying active and healthy!
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I hadn’t heard that so looked it up
" 100% free of flaxseed, a common allergen."
omg, did they really buy into the fact that Nextmune, a commonly used company for allergy testing via blood, reports that most horses are “allergic” to flax? They’ve been called out on the fact their system is wrong, by quite a few PhD level folks. Their whole premise is incorrect, blood testing for food allergies is highly unreliable. And they made things worse by changing to only giving you a Positve, or not, result, instead of a number, which is further duping the customer.
I didn’t find what other changes they made
I will say that I have my horses on Tribute Kalm 'N EZ. However, a few weeks ago, my senior gelding stopped eating. He’s 31, so I was worried that he was “telling me” something. After a few days not eating his feed, I had the vet out to examine him. His vitals were good, blood work was not bad. I mentioned to my vet, it was too bad you couldn’t get sample sizes of feed to test how a horse would eat (or not) it. She said the vet hospital used three different Purina feeds, and she gave me a sandwich-sized portion of each so we could see if he would eat them. Sure enough, the old man gobbled up the Ultium Competition. So there was something about the Kalm 'N EZ that he didn’t want to east it anymore. Seems he has more refined tastes in his old age. 
I may see if he will eat any other non-Tribute feed, but I hate to shell out for a 50-lb bag if he doesn’t eat it.
My other horses are mostly easy keepers. When I had another TB on the farm, he did NOT do well on Tribute, and he also went a bit bonkers on Ultium. Horses are certainly individuals.
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I switched when my local stores had issues stocking the TC Gold balancer. Not their fault–they’d order it, but it was hit or miss whether TC would delver enough. I switched to the Tribute Wholesome Blends feed. My younger horse stayed on TC senior for a while because he needed more pounds of food, and I have to order the Tribute to get it here. But I switched him to the same diet as my soy allergy horse once he got to the more adult easier keeper WB body. Both are doing great on it. Even the younger one who doesn’t necessarily need to go soy-free has had much better gut health since I switched feeds. It was always a challenge especially with FWS. It’s more expensive for me to get Tribute, but I’m saving in not feeding as many other supplements.
FWIW, that’s a mill issues, rather than TC directly. Did you contact TC about that? Their customer service tends to be pretty top notch in straightening out stocking issues.
I’m not suggesting you switch back, I just don’t like to see TC directly getting the blame for a mill issue 
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Sounds like it… 
I am pretty frustrated over it. To me it is the most bizarre things. Other companies sell ground flax - like TC. 
I guess I should say I do not mind the other changes; Uptake & Constant Comfort; but I truly do not see the benefit. sorry about that!
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I did not because it was the same story at 3 different, independent feed stores that carry TC in my area. They would order X bags and they were supposed to get deliveries every Tuesday or Wednesday. I’d call around and they’d often tell me that they got no bags or only Y and not X they ordered. It affected all of the products but the Gold balancer seemed to be the hardest to get. But allergy horse likes the Tribute better and is doing better without the added iron, and so I wouldn’t switch back in any case unless I stopped being able to get Tribute shipped to me.
I used to feed and liked TC Gold Balancer, but had the same issues with needing it special ordered and it being hard to time it right with the local dealer who wasn’t thrilled that I was the only one feeding it and would only need two bags every 50 days or so.
My guy doesn’t like Wholesome Blends Balancer. He outright refused it at first and now I hand him a little here and there as a treat and he’ll eat it, but I don’t think he loves it. I did slip a cup of it into his dinner last night and his brekkie this morning and he ate it okay. I’m not convinced he’ll keep eating it though, and it’s expensive and getting it through Chewy is okay, but when I received the bag I have, freaking FedEx left it literally laying in the middle of the end of my driveway. I wasn’t thrilled about that. I get a lot of deliveries from Chewy and I’ve never had that happen before. It makes me nervous that FedEx could screw up and leave it out there and it wind up raining.
I’ve basically started making my own soy-free feed: beet pulp shreds, ground flax, rice bran, a forage balancer (right now KIS Trace but going to switch to Omneity and add MB’s 3:1 Zn/Cu supplement soon because I’m smitten with every supplement I’ve tried from MB so far (spirulina, B-Vitamin Pack, w-3 oil).
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