About Us

At Lucerne Products we manufacture Putaruru Lucerne Chaff, and we know nothing about horses.  Don’t you push dollars in the front end and shovel the residue from the other end?

After 40 years of making lucerne chaff we do lay claim to knowing something about manufacturing it.  We’re still learning, but like to think we do some things right.

Here are some brief facts about lucerne chaff, the development of the Company over the years, and how we endeavour to respond to our customers needs.

As to the feeding value of lucerne chaff, nutritionists and vets are your experts.  Suffice to say that is has been unsurpassed as a reliable base feed for ruminant animals for 40 years plus.  If your horse was penned up with nothing but lucerne chaff, water, and regular exercise, he or she would remain perfectly healthy, maintain good condition and an excellent coat.

Lucerne or alfalfa if you drawl, is a legume like clover, but very deep rooting.  Root depths of over 5 metres have been recorded.  Lucerne is dormant in the winter months, then grows from October to Easter.  It is harvested 3 or 4 times each season at 4-6 weekly intervals, and grows as much dry matter in 5 months as a good rye pasture does in twelve.

In the last 20 years new strains have been developed to combat diseases, so reducing the need for herbicides, and to improve the leaf to stem ration for more nutritious hay.  We have found that magnesium enhanced fertilizer improves whole leaf retention in the handling process.  The leaf is the main protein provider in lucerne chaff – 17% - 20% protein.  The stem or stalk provides some protein, but mainly fibre – 35% fibre by analysis.  That fibre is so important for single stomach animals such as a horse or human being. 

What are some of the innovations we at Lucerne Products have developed over the years?

• The most significant is to be able to dry the lucerne to 8% moisture content (without powdering the delicate leaves), to ensure storability.  Putaruru Lucerne can be stored with confidence in dry conditions for up to 12 months.

• We’ve developed ways of cutting chaff at different stem lengths for different uses: 16-20 mm so manufacturers can blend it into their mixtures for calves, 20-30 mm for horses so they will chew to generate saliva.   Developing a consistent cut is another innovation.  Horses tend to leave straws over 50 mm long, and a consistent cut makes for easy mixing in your secret formula.

• Introducing  a 20 kg polypropylene sack that you can carry yourself when hubby is at golf, and that won’t dirty the boot of the Beamer is another innovation.

• With the general preference for feeding pre-prepared feeds and feeding them dry, the necessity for eliminating dust entirely became apparent.  We responded and after much experimentation and development produced “dust-free lucerne chaff”.  We developed a way of spraying molasses evenly into the chaff to capture any dust, ie, powdered leaf so it finds its way as protein into your horses mouth, not up his nose.  There’s 2-3 cups of molasses in every sack..  You can’t even smell it, but your horse can.  Its job is to make our lucerne chaff dust-free.

In recognition of industry support in using our product, we provide in excess of 200 sacks of lucerne chaff per year in sponsorship at events for several groups including horses, goats and cows.  It is a two-way trade – some of these sponsorships have been repeated for over 10 years.  Because it is a natural, nutritious feed with no unknown additives or preservatives, we believe lucerne chaff will remain a staple feed in the foreseeable future, with one proviso – it needs Putaruru in front of it for consistency and reliability.


Putaruru Lucerne Chaff

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YOUR HORSE WILL LIKE IT TOO!!!