As someone with a personal flax allergy I wish human food producers would take note. It is super easy to add flax to your diet but really freaking hard to remove it when its added in trace amounts to everything. I do not think it is an innocuous as most people think.
After my personal experience and the excruciating stomach pain I won’t feed anything with flax to my horses.
This seems to be what is happening here too. They are ordering a pallet, and then I go there on restock day and there is only a bag or two, or sometimes none left over by the time I am there after work. I talk to management and they either say they didn’t get any in on the truck, or they only got a couple of bags.
This is actually a pro for me. My riding horse seems to be allergic to flax. I added Smartpak’s pre-ground flax to his diet last spring and he went NQR. Vet couldn’t seem to diagnose anything specific. The only thing that had changed was me adding the flax, so on a hunch I took him off of it. Within a couple of weeks he was back to normal with no other changes or explanation. Could have been a coincidence, but I have avoided adding any type of flax to his diet since then.
I did appreciate that I could order Tribute from Chewy if I need to in a pinch. I have done that with dog food and chicken food, even though I do feel bad seeing the UPS driver sling a 100 pound box up the driveway!
they all likely bought from the same mill
The same can be said about soy, and alfalfa, and corn, and oats. Finding soy-free isn’t toooooo hard these days, but finding things without alfalfa is a lot harder. Molasses too.
The issue is that the vast, vast majority of horses are just not allergic to those ingredients. Of the common allergens, flax is not high on the list. The only place flax is a “common” allergen, is Nextmune, which is flawed in general (blood testing not reliable), and extra flawed in how may horses they tag as “allergic” to flax
A huge issue is that the vast majority of feeds are higher in Omega 6 than 3. Removing flax creates a bigger imbalance. Adding flax to the diet isn’t necessarily simple - lots of boarding situations are a one-scoop-shop, no supplements. Or you pay extra.
All I’m saying in this is that Tribute is really marketing to a niche, which is fine, even if it’s not grounded in science. If people continue to buy, great, they found a great marketing spot. If flax were such a common allergen, I feel it would be much more apparent by now, given how many yearrrrrs flax has been in feeds
Has Tribute removed flax from all of its feeds? I noticed on Chewy that some of the versions of Kalm N EZ (like the soy-free) still list flax as an ingredient.
I spoke to our one of our local feed stores about stocking more TC Balancer and within weeks they were able to up their order and have consistently had far more stock than they used to. So I guess it just depends.
I will say that when I fed the TC Balancer Gold, I couldn’t get anyone local to order it for me even though they carried other feeds from the Gold line. Which was weird. I had to order online and pay a bit of a premium and my horse didn’t do any better on it, so I gave that up.
If TC weren’t available, but Tribute was easy to buy locally, I’d give it a try. The specs of their Wholesome Blend balanced would likely be suitable (on paper) with a few little tweaks, but I also have to add stuff on top of the TC. I generally try to feed what I can source locally. I’m really not a Purina fan, so that’s sort of my last resort, but even then, if that’s all I had and it technically met most of my requirements, I’d give it a go.
I also get a $10 off a $50 purchase coupon almost monthly at one of our farm supply/feed stores. So I use that toward buying my feed, which is a plus. Usually I do need a bag of balancer around that time and some other small item from there.
I love the Chewy option! Just ordered 3 more bags of Wholesome Blends balancer and they will let you have the auto ship price if you have to move the order up, FYI. I am still figuring out exactly how often I need to place the order. Right now it looks like I’m going through about a bag a week feeding 6 horses on it (2 are on TCS). That maths pretty accurately for what I am targeting as they are all fatties. I add Copper/Zinc from MadBarn and that’s all (sort of, I quit my Smartpaks with the recent $$ changes, so when the current ones are done, that’s it).
here’s the page with the changes, and it lists the feed which no longer have flax. But also, Chewy may still have stock made before the change
I fed TC senior for a good while, then TC Sr Gold for several years. But I switched to Tribute Senior Sport a couple of months ago. Price point a little better and my mare looks great so I’ve been happy with the change so far.
I switched from TC to Tribute because I noticed that my horses didn’t look as good as they once did. I use the Tribute Essential K and mix in some Cavalor Wholegain to give them some cool energy. I also mix in some Standlee chopped timothy/alfalfa forage to prevent choke and slow down their eating. All of this is topped off with some water so it’s not too dry.
I’ve been really happy so far.
Nextmune has altered its testing to account for the flax positives. When I repeated testing in 2024, flax no longer was positive for my young horse.
I’d like to see proof of that, as almost all the newest ones I’ve seen are still showing P for flax.
Worse, they removed the number results, which don’t let you decide whether it’s a low P and HIGHLY unlikely to be an allergy, or a very high P and likely to be a true allergy
Either way, blood testing for food allergies is still highly unreliable.
It’s not very likely he suddenly got over a flax allergy though. What’s far more likely is that flax was a positive because of some underlying issue (like some leaky gut) where random things were tripping triggers, but weren’t actual allergens.
I will look more closely at the Wholesome Blend option. I know people who have used Essential K in the past, so I just automatically went to it as the option for a ration balancer from them. I did use the mad barn grain comparison tool to rule out Buckeye as an option when comparing Tribute, Buckeye, and Triple Crown. Buckeye didn’t even come close to providing the same amount of vitamins and minerals.
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