Alfalfa pellets - they won't eat them!!

cptrayes

cptrayes

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Has anyone got horses who just will not eat alfalfa pellets? I've tried everything and introduced it very gradually but they will not have it. One of the two will eat anything. Bute, wormers in his food, antibiotics, everything. But not alfalfa pellets!!

The problem is that I was daft enough to buy thirty sacks of the stuff direct from the farm, so I'm stuck with rather a lot of alfalfa that I paid £8 a bag for :D

Anyone in Cheshire/Staffs/Derbyshire need some alfalfa????
 
Mine eat them - soaked with grass pellets and unmollassed beet pulp - have you tried that? I'd take it off your hands ( :) ) but not sure about 30 at one time. How far away are you?
 
Mine don't like them either! Try soaking just a handful with a bucket of sugar beet, they might not notice them then and you can increase the AP slowly.
Normal grass nuts are under £8 too but Alfa products are notoriously highly priced anyway!
 
I switched Apache to simple systems, and he who will eat anything, turned his nose up at the grass nuts :-(

He's eat them if I mixed some high fibre cubes in, but not on their own...

Gave up and went back to normal feeds..
 
Maesfen said:
Mine don't like them either! Try soaking just a handful with a bucket of sugar beet, they might not notice them then and you can increase the AP slowly.
Normal grass nuts are under £8 too but Alfa products are notoriously highly priced anyway!
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They'll just about tolerate it as you have suggested. It's only going to take two years to finish them up at that rate. I wish I'd never tried to give up my trusty old own brand horse and pony cubes now!
 
JillA said:
Mine eat them - soaked with grass pellets and unmollassed beet pulp - have you tried that? I'd take it off your hands ( :) ) but not sure about 30 at one time. How far away are you?
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Let me know if you are going up the M6 over the holidays, if you'll take three or four, I'll gladly drive as many bags as you want out to one of the services. Use by date is June 2015 and they are plastic wrapped, so store easily.
 
cptrayes said:
Let me know if you are going up the M6 over the holidays, if you'll take three or four, I'll gladly drive as many bags as you want out to one of the services. Use by date is June 2015 and they are plastic wrapped, so store easily.
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Okay, sadly my journey on the M6 over the holidays will be in the other direction, to Worcester :( I'll bear it in mind over the coming weeks though.
 
TarrSteps said:
Have you tried pouring boiling water over them? (Pellets not horses!)
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:D

I've been soaking them for a day, and they are certainly more palatable as mush. They weigh a third more than my normal cubes, so they are very, very hard and I think they don't like that as well as the smell/taste.

Major gut bucket will now eat it. He isn't thrilled, but he is licking the bucket clean.

Gut bucket minor will eat it mixed with three times the weight of cubes, which after soaking is about half and half to look at.

It's a pain to have to soak it and it will be a nightmare to soak that amount in the house of we get a freeze :( it will also be difficult to get gut bucket minor to eat enough of it to keep his weight on if he won't eat the dense cubes. Four kilos of the mush is just an enormous volume!!

I'm experimenting with how to get the pellets to soften a bit without going into a total mush. I think the secret is probably a much thinner layer in a much bigger bucket.

The next problem I might have is that Major gut bucket has a very sensitive digestive system and he gave some signs of hind gut acidosis this morning which were worrying :( I'm off to research that now, too late again of course, stupid fool that I am.


PS. Early research suggests it should help his digestion, not make it worse, so perhaps it's just the changeover and he'll settle with it.
 
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I always soak them as the pellets are very hard and the risk of choke with them too great. I soak in cold water, put the nuts in a bucket 7pm, water and they are ready for the am feed. Soak am and they are ready for the pm feed. As I have 7 on them I soak 7 separate buckets so that they are already in each horse's correct bucket come feed time. I specifically feed them to 2 horses with hind gut problems to help the gut.
 
Thanks, that's very interesting. How much water do you put with them?. I'm getting the impression that if I just about cover them with water, that's about right. I have just discovered the half-day cold water timing, which also helps make things a bit more manageable. I really think gut bucket major needs to be on them, so I'm going to persevere.
 
not much more than cover them for a small quantity however if you are feeding a much larger feed it is suprising how much you need. If a little too much they go mushy which doesn't matter for mine. If slightly too little they dissolve but produce a dry crumbly texture. Some horses prefer drier, some prefer wetter.
Mine totally adore them, they will take any supplements etc in them.
 
paddy555 said:
not much more than cover them for a small quantity however if you are feeding a much larger feed it is suprising how much you need. If a little too much they go mushy which doesn't matter for mine. If slightly too little they dissolve but produce a dry crumbly texture. Some horses prefer drier, some prefer wetter.
Mine totally adore them, they will take any supplements etc in them.
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Thanks. I shall carry on with the cookery experiments :)
 
Try using boiling water and a shorter soaking time, so they are still warm when you feed them, if you can. I've not used the pellets a great deal but have used a similar product in Canada extensively and found more horses were keen consumers with this method. (It has the added advantage of not freezing if you soak in the feed room but not such an issue here.)
 
paddy555 said:
I think it must depend on the make. Mine are Dengie ones and if I used hot water they would still take a couple of hours to fully soak.
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Mine too, I tried it but they are still rock hard. I also find it more convenient with both the pellets and with beet to soak and walk away till next day than to have to wait while it soaks.

My latest experiment is to mix with wet sugar beet. My guess is that this will give me an alfalfa/beet crumb, rather than paste.

Major gut bucket ate both his own tea and gut bucket minor's last night - I left it in his stable by mistake!!! If that had been cereals it could have been disastrous.

Even though he is eating less, gut bucket minor appears to have put on a little weight and looks lovely. I'm guessing that my cheap pony cubes didn't have that much real goodness in them, which was one reason why I swapped.

Thanks for all the help everyone.
 
Mine does really well on these (Dengie) but like yours was not keen at first. He is less fussy now, but previously only ate them when they were mixed with soaked speedybeet and fed immediately (i.e. NOT soaked). I make sure that the beet is quite sloppy, and that there is sufficient to avoid him choking. He is a slow and careful eater though - I have had a pony who bolted his feed get a mild choke with this mix, so he was changed to fully soaked.

He is now OK if I soak it together, but does seem to prefer them crunchy if I am feeling generous.
 
We have recently changed our 20+ liveries and our own horses onto dengie alfalfa pellets and forage plus balancer and they all lick their buckets clean. Most of them were previously eating heavily molassed comp mix, conditioning mix etc so we've been surprised how readily they've accepted the alfalfa pellets.

We make the morning feeds up the night before and cover the pellets with cold water, and then mix the minerals in just before feeding. The night feeds are made up straight after morning feeding.
 
Lucyad said:
Mine does really well on these (Dengie) but like yours was not keen at first. He is less fussy now, but previously only ate them when they were mixed with soaked speedybeet and fed immediately (i.e. NOT soaked). I make sure that the beet is quite sloppy, and that there is sufficient to avoid him choking. He is a slow and careful eater though - I have had a pony who bolted his feed get a mild choke with this mix, so he was changed to fully soaked.

He is now OK if I soak it together, but does seem to prefer them crunchy if I am feeling generous.
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Now I've seen how big a volume they blew up to when soaked, I'm to scared to feed them dry even if they like them they way. Thankfully, I don't think either of them do.
 
RobinHood said:
We have recently changed our 20+ liveries and our own horses onto dengie alfalfa pellets and forage plus balancer and they all lick their buckets clean. Most of them were previously eating heavily molassed comp mix, conditioning mix etc so we've been surprised how readily they've accepted the alfalfa pellets.

We make the morning feeds up the night before and cover the pellets with cold water, and then mix the minerals in just before feeding. The night feeds are made up straight after morning feeding.
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I'm just swapping to this routine now, only I've gone for the Pro Earth balancer because it's got yeast in it and that stops major gut bucket from getting footie in summer.

You are so lucky to have had all of yours take to it happily. I was so shocked when mine wouldn't eat it !

Have you been feeding it long enough to judge how well they are holding their weight with it? I am concerned about the horse I used to hunt. At this time of year he would be on at least four kilos of cubes, but they is no way he will eat that volume of soaked alfalfa, it's a mountain!

He is definitely holding his weight at the moment in spite of eating a lower dry weight of food, and I still have scope to add oil, but I do worry.
 
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cptrayes said:
I am concerned about the horse I used to hunt. At this time of year he would be on at least four kilos of cubes, but they is no way he will eat that volume of soaked alfalfa, it's a mountain!

He is definitely holding his weight at the moment in spite of eating a lower dry weight of food, and I still have scope to add oil, but I do worry.
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any reason not to add copra?
 
How odd, mine are Dengie too and they literally soak in moments with hot water!. I don't feed them slushy but they soften and start to break up so are easily palatable
 
cptrayes said:
I'm just swapping to this routine now, only I've gone for the Pro Earth balancer because it's got yeast in it and that stops major gut bucket from getting footie in summer.

You are so lucky to have had all of yours take to it happily. I was so shocked when mine wouldn't eat it !

Have you been feeding it long enough to judge how well they are holding their weight with it? I am concerned about the horse I used to hunt. At this time of year he would be on at least four kilos of cubes, but they is no way he will eat that volume of soaked alfalfa, it's a mountain!

He is definitely holding his weight at the moment in spite of eating a lower dry weight of food, and I still have scope to add oil, but I do worry.
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We've been feeding it since August and so far so good however nearly all our horses are good doers in light to medium work so it's just a token amount of feed. The most any of them get is 1 jug of pellets twice a day, plus ad lib weighed hay and 4hrs of grass.
 
cptrayes said:
Only that I'd like to keep to the minimum number of different things to order as possible.
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soaked alfalfa and copra and linseed. Seems to be easy on the hind gut and helps with the condition/weight. Just a thought. After a year on this there is no way I would ever go back.

(and a bit of pro hoof or in our case metabalance)
 
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