Aside from taking forever to break down from pellet form, they are slimy/sticky, do not smell like beet pulp, are orangish-colored and mushy, and I cannot get the water to rinse clean. I'm not going to be able to feed this to my horses except for a brief interim period, that's for sure.
If I recall correctly, Standlee beet pulp shreds have molasses in them. But I also just looked at the ingredient list online for their shreds and it says "concentrated separator by-product" - what the heck is THAT?
But, on a hopeful note...
I just heard from the Quality Control manager at MidWest Agri. They have isolated the issue to one factory out of three that process the shreds.
He is traveling there on Friday to show them the stones I sent him and they will try to figure out what's going on.
Meanwhile, he had already sent me a free bag of shreds from a different factory and if I'm lucky they will arrive today so I can ditch the Blue Seal pellets.
If you feed MidWest Agri plain shreds, use a metal colander and see if you find anything. You can hear the stones clinking if you rinse in small batches - once the water runs through, slide the shreds around with your fingers. You'll hear the stones if they are in there.
If you don't find anything hopefully it means you have a bag from a different factory and can continue to enjoy the cleanest shreds I've ever seen. (which I'm reminding myself of as I try other brands and forms).
Actually, you might want to use the metal colander no matter WHAT you're feeding - just to check the quality and keep a close eye on what is going into your horse. As I have said before, I've found foreign objects of one kind or another in every feed I've ever bought - and I have only ever bought high end feeds. (the only exception is Hansen Mueller oats)
Again, I am impressed with the response from the Mid-West AGri. My local feed store told me Saturday that the manager called last week and got all the information from them (bag numbers, lot numbers) so he could proceed with sorting this out.
It's nice to deal with a responsive company and I'm looking forward to being able to go back to their product.
5 comments:
The company really seems to be taking this seriously and doing their best to remedy the situation. Nice to see there are still some companies that care about the quality of their products. Hope your new bag comes today. The other brand doesn't sound very good.
Glad to hear that Mid-West Agri is handling this appropriately. This evening's mash will be sieved like crazy you can be sure.
I don't have any choice about what brand I use unless I want to travel over three hours - not feasible - so I'm hoping my source has come from a different lot than yours... fingers crossed.
Thanks for your vigilance billie! :D
A, it arrived in time for dinner tubs last night - it was the last thing unloaded off the UPS truck, which I glimpsed because I happened to be upstairs when the truck arrived.
C, hopefully yours comes from a different factory. I know folks in Lee and Moore Counties have found stones too, but they're adjacent to us, so... not sure about your part of the state.
Hopefully they will identify the source of the issue this week and then we should all be able to get back to normal. I'm eager to dig into this new bag and see how it is.
Seeing the collection of rocks in person is quite something...
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