By Rebecca Harper 

It takes a winner to create a winner – and EQUIFIBRE® Lucerne Pro developers Tom Tarver and Lucia Voss certainly know a thing or two about winning.

The Kawerau couple have developed and manufactured their top quality forage feed specifically with the horse’s needs in mind, and Tom’s Norwood Gold Cup winning Popeye is powered by EQUIFIBRE® Lucerne Pro.

As an accomplished rider and with a background in agriculture, Tom identified the need for top quality forage feeds through his business, Let’s Bale, producing nutritious, high-quality fibre feeds.

Starting out in 2013 as a small pet hay manufacturer, Tom launched Let’s Bale. Fast forward five years and the business has grown into a fibre specialist feed company and supplies both domestic and export markets.

It is just over a year since the April 2017 launch of their specialised horse product – EQUIFIBRE® Lucerne Pro, which has generated strong interest in New Zealand and the Japanese market.

The product was the result of a three-year collaboration with silage experts Nutritech and equine nutritionists Dunstan Nutrition Ltd.

“We developed this product with our clientele…asking them what they would like in a product. And the result was EQUIFIBRE® Lucerne Pro, a highly nutritious, 100% additive-free forage fibre, which is very easy to handle,” Tom says.

The Lucerne is grown, cut, fermented and baled on New Zealand paddocks with rich volcanic soils, under a stringent control methodology.

“All our Lucerne stands are controlled by us and EQUIFIBRE® Lucerne Pro is packed on-site at our specialised plant. We can trace each bag to its origin.”

The product is also pressed into convenient block-sized portions for ease of use and, being 100% natural, it retains its quality, nutrition and freshness for longer.

The Lucerne is cut at optimal length, which slows consumption and encourages chewing, increasing saliva production. This can assist with good gastric health for horses.

Tom and fiancé Lucia export horses to Japan and also compete on the ESNZ Show Jumping circuit with a top team of horses. This makes sponsorship of the Dunstan Horsefeeds and Equifibre Pro-Amateur Rider Series, Dunstan Horsefeeds & Equifibre Horse Grand Prix Series and Dunstan Horsefeeds & Equifibre Junior Rider Series an obvious choice for the couple.

“We really enjoy the sport ourselves and understand you also need to give back to the sport to make it happen. Dunstan Horsefeeds is the perfect combination for us to sponsor classes with, as EQUIFIBRE® Lucerne Pro complements well with their products,” Lucia says.

“We enjoy the Grand Prix, Junior and Pro-Am classes as they target different age and level riders, which we enjoy watching and keeping track of ourselves.”