any feed experts???

J

jewel

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my old horse is coming back to me next week at the moment he is having about £30 of hard feed a week obviously would love it to be cheaper. he is having for breakfast and tea 2 scoops of senior conditioning mix, 1 scoop of alfa oil and about 1 and half of sugar beet. in the daytime he has a large tub with 2 oats, 2 sugar beet and filled up with alfa oil. he can't not chew hay or haylage. weight wise he is not carrying enough IMO. so what do you suggest??
 
I'd be phoning Baileys as well. I totally recommend their food and the service you receive from them is second to none.

A few years ago (about 15 now lol) I had an old horse who could only eat sloppy feed and we gave her Baileys Cooked Cereal Meal along with Sugar beet and that kept her condition on.
 
Difficult position...

Again I would be careful feeding that much concentrates in one go. It is very unlikely that he can digest it, they are not designed to digest cereals, especially not in those quantities. So likelihood is you are wasting feed/money. That's a huge feed and their stomachs aren't that big, so you run the risk of pushing undigested food into his intestines. I would call a feedline and ask advice.

Could you try readigrass? It's very short cut and conitioning. Also swop the sugar beet to alfa beet, Also conditioning.

I had a friend with an old horse with no teeth, and she used to cut up his feed by hand and then soak it into a mush! Bless her!
 
My old girl (30 this year!) is out on loan, the lady that has her feeds her haylage ad-lib, Allen and Page Fast Fibre and Dodson and Horrell 16 plus cubes soaked and a bit of Kwikbeet as a sloppy bucket feed. Despite having lost (or had removed) several teeth, she manages to eat it all (or rather slurp it like soup) and she looks fantastic on it.
 
Ditto galaxy.
If he can eat readigrass it is a fabulous conditioning feed and can be soaked into slop with sugar beet or alpha beet. It is the same protein as a conditioning mix, but slow release and fibre rather than cereal based.

FIona
 
thanks for the replies i've emailed baileys so hope to hear back from them. going to give the readigrass a try and the alfa beet.
 
One thing that might be useful to keep in mind is, all cubes in my experience soak beautifully, therefore resulting in a lovely pulp of practically any feed
smile.gif
 
Are you feeding a hay replacer then, if he is not eating hay or haylage?? Forage (hay/haylage/hay replacer) should make up the majority of his diet, and this is where the majority of calories should be coming from. You therefore need to address his forage intake before addressing his hard feed. Unfortunately, hay replacers arent the cheapest, and depending on the size of your horse, you are probably looking at spending £30 if not more on feed a week.
 
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