Anyone else gulping at the price of feed?

H

henryhorn

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www.narramorehorses.blogspot.com
I'm lucky in that our horses mostly live on haylage or grass, but the stallion., William and a couple of others get hard feed.
Checking my bills this week I couldn't believe a bag of feed can be over eleven quid!
Now I know the local merchant makes diddly squat profit on it, so it must be the costs associated of transport and wheat.
I've put everything I can on basic mix but two have to have Saracen's special stuff, one because it suits him perfectly and the other because I daren't risk rapid bone growth.
What a laugh, here I am changing my car for a less thirsty one, turning the heating down and installing solar panels for cheaper energy and all so I can pay for the horse food..It's a mad mad world.
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Nope, I was quite happy today when I bought D&H hi fibre nuts for £5.67 and a sack of honeychop for £3.19!!! From Pets at Home! lol
But then I like to keep hard feed simple and don't tend to go for all the claims on expensive feed. Horses always managed 'back in the day' before all these fancy nutritionalists came along
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IT'S horrendous.......i thank my lucky stars i don't have TB'S anymore!! everytime fuel goes up so does feed, but the other things do as well, the price of a loaf of bread has gone from 80. to £1.20 within 3 weeks
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I can still get a bag of oats for £5.50 and a bag of hi fi for about £8 so I'm not so badly off - hay is £2.50 and hes eating nearly a bale a day though.
 
I'm paying about £10 per bag for D & H Build Up / Competition Mix, £8.50 for MVF Stud Nuts, & £6 ish for MVF cool mix. It's all gone up over the winter to to the poor crops in the wet of 2007 & I guess increased production charges associated with the cost of fuel.
 
We buy our feed in from wholesalers and in the past 8 months, we've have 6 new price lists posted out to us. The last time went up from February to April and a bag of D&H Stud Mix had gone up by 50p a bag this time which, considering we buy 30 bags every couple of weeks is quite a lot more money to find - along with Condition and Cubes. The only thing that hasn't gone up is Alfalfa. My heart drops when I see another envelope with the feed merchants stamp on it - wondering how much more its gone up this time.
 
Just how many brain cells does Gordon Brown have if he can keep blethering on about how inflation is under control and the UK is ideally plaved to weather financial market turbulence? He clearly never shops...for feed for animals or himself!!! Butter..cd buy unsalted for cakes etc for 95p 6 months ago...now min£1.30, loaf of bread...up 25- 30p. I make my own...but yeast up from 54p to 67p, flour from £1.19 to £ 1.49...cost of heating oven up x squillion %....
Diesel round here now between £1.20 and £1.24 a litre. Haylage up to £5.65 from £4.80. Costs are ROCKETING! Wake up and smell the coffee, Gordon...hell, we can only afford to smell it...not drink it!!!
Here endeth the rant...don't get me started on the NHS/weekend dental services/the police/ambulance and the probs of living on a border between two counties so that when you dial 999 they say you don't exist...........GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR
 
No - the summer pasture is all ready but we can't turn out in it while its so wet and cold as it would ruin it so we are still feeding loads of hay
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on full rations winergy equilibrium growth, he is getting about a bag a week and its £11 for a 15kg bag :0 looking good though, hopefully will drop the amount down soon!
 
I went off feeding happy hoof etc as I resented paying over the odds for a posh name.

I now feed my local merchants own brand feed. At home, that means a simple chaff (no molasses) and a simple pony nut. I pay £4 for the chaff and £4.20 for the nuts (which last longer than D&H nuts).

YO feeds locally made feed, from another local merchant. The feed is wonderful. They make the mixes and chaffs as fresh as possible (quite moist too), and charge about the same price as my merchant. Oh, and they deliver too...
 
Get around it by feeding smaller company's feeds, theyre generally excellent quality and far cheaper.

I have to do this as Moon gets through a bag of hard feed every 6 days and a bag of alfalfa once a fortnight. I'm currently paying £7.50 for a bag of Falcon competition mix and it's lovely stuff
 
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Nope, I was quite happy today when I bought D&H hi fibre nuts for £5.67 and a sack of honeychop for £3.19!!! From Pets at Home! lol
But then I like to keep hard feed simple and don't tend to go for all the claims on expensive feed. Horses always managed 'back in the day' before all these fancy nutritionalists came along
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I'm another "keep it simple" fan, I'm always surprised at people's feed rooms with go faster, jump higher, calm downer additives, there's always someone asking what to feed a fizzy horse with too much energy, (don't, is my advice)!
But as I keep my horses within the LEZ I am expecting my feed bills to rocket!
 
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why is it that horsey people do that???
Turn off heating and put a bigger jumper on!
Beans on toast for dinner....again..but horses want for nowt!
Are we all mad?????

[/ QUOTE ] yes totally
 
As has been said elsewhere, everything is going up
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The belt tightening has started in earnest, bought my first bag of stud balancer the other day for the expectant mare and nearly fell over
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Went ot get some hayledge yesterday to be told that its going right up again next year, fertiliser and the polly wrap all going through the roof
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its pretty scarey really means allot of people arnt going to be able to aford to feed their animals, more cases of neglect.
I read somwhere that in Canida, (i think) there are hundreds of unwanted and neglected horses being dumped because the feed had gone up that much owners just cant afford to keep them anymore, lots were being transported to mexico for slaughter.
With this and the AHS its quite worrying
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Debs x
 
Yes, sadly everything is going up - have been told that both Baileys and D&H have another rise in the pipeline and Alfa A is going up soon too. The rising cost of grain coupled with the massive rises in diesel are all to blame sadly
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I too am considering using a local manufacturer, found one last week (Rands and Wilson) and am trying his conditioning cubes - £3 less than No 4, the horses seem to like them so will probably change them all over onto their mixes, a friend has her event horse on their feed and he looks fab so its worth a shot methinks.
 
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why is it that horsey people do that???
Turn off heating and put a bigger jumper on!
Beans on toast for dinner....again..but horses want for nowt!
Are we all mad?????

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Yes. Have dentist and vet next week and starting lessons again the week after so am now drinking only water as can't afford coffee!
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Picked up a bag of Endurance mix, £12.60 a bag!!!
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So he is just having that and alfa beet now (and hay obviously!!). Costing me an absolute fortune
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