Dad always said:
Success Stories
The Stories We've Heard
By Lorne and Marian Hoffman
We are attempting to gather all the things that people have told us about using our horse mineral into one document so that it is available for our dealers and the sales people who talk to our customers
We are going to start by telling a bit of background of how this mineral came into being
We were Quarter Horse breeders and were breeding as high as 130 mares per season. There were several problems that kept cropping up . Mares would not have good heat cycles. They would either be split ,only lasting a short time (often too short to get the mare bred) with a short interval before they were back in heat, or they would stay in heat for a long stretch but never strong enough that they wanted to be bred. Then too, we would send them home pregnant but there was no foal in the spring. Also, when they did come back with a foal at their side, the foal would often be tipping forward on his knees and the knees would be trembling, or the fetlock joints were getting bumpy and swollen, or the foal would be going out sideways at the knee.
We felt that these things were at least in part nutritional and looked for four or five years for something on the market that would alleviate the problems, but found there was a hole of some kind in each product. The answer, when it came, actually began to unfold at church at a financial seminar for couples with financial problems. Lorne had voted to bring this speaker in so we decided we should support the effort. It turned out that we were very impressed with him and decided to talk to him about our finances, but three minutes into the conversation we discovered that he was a feed specialist and the beginnings of Hoffman Horse Mineral were born.( we forgot all about the finance thing)
When we started feeding Hoffman’s Horse Mineral, we could hardly believe what was happening. It revolutionized our breeding operation. We got our customers on it and everyone was happy. Then Lorne got sick and we had to disperse our studs and our customers could no longer get our mineral, which they picked up when they brought their mare. We went to the UFA (United Farmers of Alberta) stores in Alberta and they agreed to carry it and the rest is history so to speak . It only took eighteen months for Hoffman’s Horse Mineral to become the high selling horse mineral in Alberta.
Below Are Results We Have Noted
Arthritis In Horses
We had used our mineral for five years before we knew that it had a positive effect on stiff and arthritic horses. We were breeders and for that reason didn’t have any old horses around. An acquaintance of ours that lives here at Stavely also, got some mineral for a young mare that had a knee problem. He had her confined to keep from doing further damage, and also had the kids’ old pony with her, because he was too crippled to get around. Both of the horses got mineral this way. About four months after he got the mineral, he stopped Lorne on the street and told him that the pony was now running all over the place. Just that morning the horses had come running to the buildings, and the pony was out in the lead.
A man from Ontario told us that he has an old cutting horse who is quite stoved up when he first comes out of his stall in the morning. He had picked up a couple of sample buckets at the show in Red Deer and before the horse had eaten all of this mineral, the fellow could see that he was coming out of the stall much more easily.
Our first time at Spruce Meadows at the trade show, a gal came along who worked for a therapeutic riding association. For obvious reasons most of the horses are old and often when a horse first comes they can be in pretty rough shape. This gal took the worst ones home and put them on her feeding program plus Hoffman’s Mineral. She said that in two weeks you would see these horses start to take an interest in their food and what was happening in the barn. In seven or eight weeks she could take the horses back to the arena for use. She said she loved to do that because, often, the workers didn’t realize that it was the same horse that she had taken away eight weeks ago. She told us that she hoped we realized what a wonderful product we had .
Breeding Mares
Our first experience with breeding mares, after we got our mineral , was with a mare that was not having a good heat cycle. She was in heat and then out and then back in and Lorne didn’t know where she was at. In the end we didn’t get her in foal that cycle. When the next cycle came around, after she had been on the mineral four or five weeks, it was quite normal and she got in foal. At that time we shook our heads and said that it couldn’t work that fast, but we have found out since that there can be several changes within five or six weeks.
The leg problems that we had been seeing all but disappeared. One fellow who has been on Hoffman’s Horse Mineral right from the beginning said that previous to using it they had become quite efficient at putting on splints when foals started to go out at the knees, and that ,since feeding it (seven years) , they have never had another crooked foal. They feel this is no small thing as their present stud leaves very long legged foals.
These same people had a mare that they always had to help foal. Once she waxed up they checked her every hour until she foaled. The year they started her on the mineral, they checked her one hour and the next hour when they went to check ,the foal was up sucking.
Another customer had trouble getting a mare to carry the foal and not abort, but after having her on our mineral before she was bred and continuing through her pregnancy, she carried the baby and produced a nice foal in the spring
I also know that we had a lot less incidents of mares aborting over the winter when we got our customers on Hoffman’s Horse Mineral.
We know of several older mares that had begun having a foal every other year. After eating our mineral, they went back to having a foal every year. One mare, in particular was an eighteen year old mare who came in dry, but she had a foal when she was nineteen, twenty and twenty-one. We lost track of her after that.
A lady told us at Spruce Meadows trade show that she had bought a mare in foal, but when the foal was born, his legs went out from under him and they had to put him down. The next foal also had leg problems and had to have an operation, and I don’t remember exactly how it turned out except that they weren’t really happy about it. That fall I talked to her at Spruce Meadows for the first time and she decided to put her horses on our mineral. She stopped the next year and told me that this time the same mares’ colt was born straight and stayed that way and she was so thrilled.
There are also two fairly good sized breeders in Alberta who didn’t like the legs and joints on their colts. They put their broodmare bands on free choice Hoffman’s Horse Mineral and are extremely pleased with the results. Good legs and good joints. When they did this they said that the first while, until the mares got the mineral they needed, it was expensive, but once they leveled out they find it very cost effective. More about saving costs under feed, sickness, and condition.
We have had three people, I believe, tell us that when they fed Hoffman’s their problems with retained placentas disappeared. I expect that the improved health of the mare has a lot to do with this.
An acquaintance of ours here at Stavely has a mare that didn’t do a good job of feeding her first foal and started out the second one the same way, but with the addition of our mineral, she started to milk better and the foal ended up doing very nicely.