All Breed StallionSeason Auction
To Benefit New Vocations and CANTER Ohio
January 27th - Feb 3rd 2008
New Vocations is the largest non-profit Equine adoption program in the United States. Last year,we placed over 300 horses to carefully screened and monitored homes. Each year, we hold several fund raising events to help support our cause. This is year, we are holding an All Breed Stallion Season Auction on www.thoroughlybred.com Please visit them and register to their website if you plan to participate in our charity auction.
The All Breed Stallion Season Auction has been set up to provide a way for the entire horse industry to support racehorse
adoption through the donation of stallion seasons. The auction will take place *online* January 27th- February 3rd 2008. The proceeds will go directly to New Vocations Racehorse Adoption Program and CANTER Ohio to support the efforts in finding homes for retired racehorses.
Chose from over 45 seasons from nearly a dozen different breeds of stallions from Thoroughbreds to Quarter Horses to Welsh Ponies. For
more information and a list of available seasons go to http://www.horseadoption.com/Stallion%20Season%20List.pdf
Kevin Bradbury of BMCI runs all 8 dressage shows each year at Waterloo Hunt Club in Grass Lake, Michigan. The July show is a 5-ring event offering Instant Scoring and lots of rider support.
"Our goal, says Kevin, "is to create a really nice quality show that gives people something special. We want it to be an Event. The Waterloo dressage shows are often a five-ring event and we feel we should have amenities for the riders. We try to ad something nice for the competitors - we still do a complimentary exhibitor party and lots of shows have eliminated this. And we always score everyone's ride with the Instant Scoring. You see that scoring system at Devon and CDI's but it's not common at non-CDI's. We try to be well-staffed. For example, we train and pay our scribes.
I think that would be an incentive to become a good scribe. Does the money make a difference?
"If you pay scribes, it's more common to get a 3-day commitment which helps the judges a lot. My judges come to me by lunchtime on the first day and say, 'The scribe that I have today, I want for the whole show.' We help the scribes learn their job. There's e-scribe, an online program to help them learn the parameters of the job. And we have them sit with another scribe while the scoring is going on so they learn the procedures. Then we move them into normal scribing. I also have a person who teaches them and sometimes we set up training sessions with sample data and scoring. But usually we have the same people come back year after year to scribe so we haven't had to do training sessions for a long time.
How does it actually work?
W e have a computer in every judge's box. There the judge makes remarks, the scribe types them in, and the scores go instantly to our main computers and up on the screens for viewing."
As a reporter, I really like the fact that I can watch a ride, go interview, come back and watch another ride - and not worry about what's happening out of sight. That's because everything at Waterloo is literally by the book. Your prize list offers all the classes and riders indexed in three or four different ways. It's a great aid to me.
"A dressage show runs by the clock, with every ride and break in all five rings scheduled to the minute. Our company also organizes a Breed Show in July. A breed show goes by othe rules: it's a first call and last call format. "This surprises people," says Kevin, "who are used to the dressage format. It's a good format for showing young mares and stallions and young horses. But riders in normal competitive shows prefer to know when they can expect to ride. It helps them warm up especially when they're riding several horses and, as trainers, have coaching to do, too. We pride ourselves on keeping the shows on schedule."
Bradbury Management and Consulting is available to set up and run competitive shows and to act as consultant in setting up systems such as online entries and computer scoring. They're based in Dexter, Michigan. 734-426-2111 or info@HorseShowOffice.com
Bill Cortis makes Great Lakes Blend, a supplement designed for our region. I asked him why he chose that name.
Dave Zimmerman, a Michigan veterinarian, developed this vitamin/mineral supplement which I sell as Great Lakes Blend. He developed the formula in 1978 because there were a lot of foals being born all across the nation with DOD, Developmental Orthopedic Disease, which resulted in bone and ligament problems as youngsters. Dave followed quite closely the research being done at universities such as Kentucky, Nebraska and MSU. They were researching vitamin and mineral needs. They found a contributing factor to DOD was a lack of selenium, zinc, magnesium and copper in the diets of the mares. In Michigan, soil analysis revealed that fields were yielding hay that has no traceable levels of selenium, magnesium, copper, iron and manganese, as well as other important vitamins and minerals.
Most horse people know now that Michigan is a selenium-deficient area. Is this the main element in the supplement?
It included those minerals – selenium, zinc, magnesium and copper – and Dave also added all the vitamins and minerals that the FDA recommended a horse should have on a daily basis. He also added a pretty good dosage of biotin which as we know is good for hoof growth and coat conditioning. The result was a supplement that was very effective in preventing DOD. A side benefit is that it improves the efficiency of the way a horse processes his food. The horses can function on less feed because what they eat now has all the ingredients they need. Also, I hear from a lot of clients that there’s improved performance.
What are the signs of selenium deficiency?
Horses tying up, cramping.
People in Michigan are sometimes afraid to feed a selenium supplement because they know that most manufacturers of grain add it to the feed. We know that too much selenium is toxic.
You can provide this supplement along with normal feeds. It contains about 3 mgs in a daily serving which is about 25% of the toxicity level. Most other fortified grains have nowhere near 3 mgs. So even if you are using a fortified feed, you’re going to be nowhere near dangerous levels.
Other supplemental products include selenium, but mine is the only available product that meets or exceeds minimum daily requirements for all vitamins/minerals recommended by the FDA, except calcium and phosphorous.
So you would be getting insufficient selenium if you fed a normal fortified grain - because those manufacturers figure their percentages based on horses are getting some selenium in their hay?
No it’s because they only dose selenium for the amount of grain being fed, which is a relatively small portion of a horses daily intake when you consider the amount of grass and hay that they consume. But, as I said, the hay in our region lacks more than that. Soil analysis reveals that Michigan fields yield hay that has low levels of selenium, magnesium, copper, iron and manganese, as well as other necessary vitamins and minerals.
But even though the supplement is specifically designed for horses in this region, it also works for horses throughout the U.S. except in those areas that are selenium rich. Most of my business is done in Michigan. We also sell a lot to Maryland, Florida and Texas. I probably sell a couple of tons a year.
So how do you know it’s working?
Within 30 to 40 days, you notice an improvement in their coat condition. Clinical tests also show increased selenium levels after 30 to 40 days. A number of vets recommend the supplement to clients when their horses test selenium deficient. After 30 to 40 days on this product, their selenium levels are appropriate.
Actually in the 70’s and 80’s I was a user of this product on my horses and Dave was my veterinarian. We were doing some breeding at the time and he recommended it to me as something that pregnant mares should be on due to our area’s soil deficencies. We bred foals for a while and then stopped. However, we still kept our horses on it because when they went off it I saw a difference in their coat condition. From time to time I would go off it and you would notice almost immediately a duller coat condition and lessened performance. I really believed in the product. When Dave Zimmerman retired and sold his practice and moved in 2000, I purchased the rights to the product from him.
What sort of horses were you riding?
My horses have always been Hannoverians. 
We did some breeding a number of years ago. . We competed some of our horses. We had a young lady who rode them in competition. I still have a 9-year old Hanoverian mare, as does my ex-wife. My horse was by Derringer out of an Elite mare. My wife’s is a Graftop baby, from frozen semen. Graftop sired world class jumpers. Now the horses are backyard pets. This is a photo of the two 9-year old mares as yearlings, born about 6 months apart.
Where can you buy this product?
Many Michigan retailers carry it such as Dexter Mill, Lakeside Saddlery, Sporthorse Saddlery, Big Acre Stores, Franklin Saddler, The Tack Stop, Covered Wagon, Oxford Farm and Garden, Lapeer Grain, New Haven Elevator, and Almont Saddlery.
You can also call my distributor Frontier Distributing in Oxford, MI to see if there is a retailer near you that carries it (248-969-2000). I also sell it online and I can ship to anyone directly.
There’s a lot of information on your website about the product and about vitamins and minerals in general.
I explain the ways our company keeps up with research, too. For example, we now use in our supplement an organic form of selenium called Sel-Plex because studies have shown it to be better for categories of horses beyond the mature, idle horse. For example, horses in athletic work, gestation/lactation or semen production face added demand for selenium. The yeast-based organic Sel-Plex meets the body’s need to store selenium better than the inorganic forms which , at one time, were all that were available. http://greatlakesblend.com/
Dexter Mill Makes Horse Feed and a Lot of people Buy It. For horse people in Washtenaw County a frequent stop is Dexter Mill where John Cares, 
Chis family and staff have builtj a large inventory of horse products. Besides loyal and knowledgeable staff, all of the Cares five kids grew up working in the store, including Charlie, 19, who is home for the holidays from University of Montana where he's a Freshman. He's on the dock this day, when I arrive to ask about the horse feed they make on site.
He takes me into the space where the machines mix the feeds and pour it into bags. The bags are sewn shut and stacked for customers. The room is full of the fine dust of grains.
"Our recipe is not a secret, everyone puts in about the same thing in the horse
feed - sweet feed, crimped oats, cracked corn, whole oats. But we use our own percentages. My dad is the expert on the feed. He went to Michigan State and he was an Ag major. We use the percentages he's worked out that are nutritionally correct for horses in our area. Each animal needs a certain amount of protein, fiber, minerals and so on. We mix for horses and also birds, sheep, cattle, goats and pigs. Some people have their own custom mixtures that we do for them and they sometimes truck in their homegrown corn and other grains.
Where do you get your corn and oats?
We take only good quality corn for the mixes we sell under the Dexter Mill label. We buy our corn from Nick Heller who grows it in Webster Township. We clean the corn here. We have a big machine that shakes and sfits it, and it has vacuums which suck all the dust off it. Then we buy our oats from Anderson's, a big grain elevator in Canada. They're expensive and heavy, which are both good qualities for oats. They are cleaned before we get them. If things are processed which means to be crimped or cracked, we do that here. We add concentrated Purina feed as a supplement. That means vitamins and minerals and protein. And we add molasses. We have a big tub of wet molasses in the basement of the grainery. We like to use local products but we can get trucked in whatever we need from anywhere.
How do you know if its good corn?
When a truckload comes in, we look at it. Corn will feel wet if it's too wet. You'll notice a difference in the weight. You can feel it in the kernels. We also test weigh it. There's a grading process we go through.
How many bags do you mix each day?
"Today," said Charlie, "we made about 6,000 pounds of custom mixtures. That's about the average. But we sell more of the Purina horse feed than the feed we actually mix ourselves. We also sell Kent feed."
Charlie translates this figure of 6,000 pounds per day into 120 bags. I add up what I buy from Dexter Mill for my eight horses and realize that a large number of area horseowners must buy from Dexter Mill. I wonder what's the hardest part of mixing grain? Charlie thought a minute and grinned.
Well, you'll be in the middle of mixing feed and a customer shows up who needs something from the dock. That's hard because you've got to get the molasses mixtures out of the machine before they harden. You know you might not have anyone come all day long but as soon as you turn on the mixer, there will be customers lined up along the dock. - but usually you're not out here alone and it's not too bad."
How do you know you've got the right weight in each bag? I know there's at least 50 pounds in each bag because, at my barn, I'm often the one who carries it from the truck to the grain bin.
We have two different ways to weigh it out. With one machine, the bag fills and it has a counter weight. As soon as it fills to the right weight, the machine shuts off. In the other machine, we eyeball the right amount and then put the bag on a scale and fill it up accurately. Our scales are all checked by the State and it's all legitimate. We bag in pounds: 20, 25, 40, 50 and 100's, depending on what we make.
Charlie, what are you studying to be at the University of Montana?
I don't know yet. I'm only a freshman.
But it's clear he knows a lot about the business of being a local supplier of farm products. Dexter Mill is in Dexter, Michigan, on 3515 Central between Main Street and the Huron River. 734-426-4621.
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