She's a showjumper, her top horses are Quick Jack, Pleasure Ride, Mr Easy Street and Recolpa Rose and her favourite products from Bluegrass Horse Feeds are Re-Leve, Flax Plus and Stamm 30. Mackenzie Healy, from Co Tyrone, speaks to our team for our magazine, The Inside Scoop.

Bluegrass Horse Feeds sponsored rider Mackenzie Healy has her future firmly mapped out. “I’m really competitive now and I can’t see myself doing anything else,” says the teenager of Omagh, County Tyrone.

Mackenzie was 18-months-old when she was bought her first ride – a 12.2hh pony. With showjumper Shane McFadden being Mackenzie’s uncle, the sport is in the family’s blood. “I can remember always riding about the yard and wanting to get on the lorry to go to shows,” says Mackenzie. “I was six-years-old when I won the under-8s Discovery final.”

Shane represented Ireland in 1998 at the European under-21 championships in Portugal, where he clinched a bronze medal, and donned the green jacket again in 2013 when he competed in the FEI World Championship for young horses in Belgium.

Mackenzie, who currently has a string of nine horses, has her sights set on top-level showjumping. “I’m aiming for the Junior European championships this year,” adds Mackenzie, who moved on to jumping horses instead of ponies quite early on. “I jumped ponies in the 138cm classes, but then I started riding the horses and we sold the ponies. I decided I got on better with the horses so I stuck with them.”

In 2017, Mackenzie and Quick Jack finished second in the Nations Cup with the junior team in Hagen, Germany. “I’m very lucky to have a French horse, Pleasure Ride, by Kannan, with me now and I’ll be aiming him for the Europeans, but I’m not going to rush things with him.”

Having been sponsored by Bluegrass Horse Feeds since 2016, Mackenzie feeds Re-Leve to her showjumpers. “I would feed this to the ones that are jumping big tracks. It gives them good condition and they’re all looking really well in themselves. I had a young horse, who lost a bit of condition, so we gave him Flax-Plus and we could really see how he put on condition and has a lot more shine on his coat,” says Mackenzie. “For the broodmares we use Stamm 30 as I think it helps both the mare and the foal get the right nutrients.”

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Bluegrass Horse Feeds is an Irish horse feed producer based at its mill in Eglish in County Tyrone. Bluegrass Horse Feeds, which produces quality and innovative horse feeds, is the Ireland Team Member of Kentucky Equine Research. The Bluegrass Horse Feeds team works closely with owners, riders and trainers using the latest nutritional research and technology to achieve optimum performance from their horses. Bluegrass distributes its feeds the length and breadth of Ireland and has over 200 stockists.  If you need nutritional advice please fill out our diet request form and while you're here find out your nearest stockist.