Balancer Vs Multivitamin&mineral supplement-estimate costs

becca1305

becca1305

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For anyone whose interested :)

Following a feed discussion I started on here after being slightly shocked at what a feed company suggested feeding (quantity wise) several of you suggested that feeding a vitamin and mineral supplement in chaff would be cheaper than feeding a balancer whilst still obviously providing the necessary vits and minerals. So interested in saving a few bob I have been perusing the internet to see how much I could save and the results are in :)

I compared Baileys Lo cal balancer to Global Herbs Globalvite and NAF Codliver Oil using the recommended amounts daily given for my weight horse, and working on the basis that with both feeds I would give a handful of chaff so I didnt include that cost in my calculations.

It turns out it would cost me (on average naturally as prices for products vary slightly depending on where you buy) £0.86 to feed baileys local balancer to one horse daily, and £0.83 to feed Global Herbs Globalvite and NAF Codliver oil to one horse daily.

Ergo in this instance it is only 3p cheaper a day to use a multivit supplement and oil instead of a balancer AND I would feed more chaff whilst using the vitamin and mineral supplement with oil, but not with balancer as it contains some fibre and protein (which according to the website provides the necessary amino acids:cool:) So I think the vit/min and oil option would work out more expensively here.

I am sure there are cheaper vitamin and mineral products on the market and yes you can buy oil from supermarkets etc so with plenty of shopping round you could probably make the vit/min and oil option cheaper but then again I havent shopped around to find the cheapest low calorie balancer either!

My conclusion = its pretty close on cost whether feeding a balancer or supplements so isnt necessarily the huge saving some people think it is. So I guess it fortuitously just boils down to picking what suits your horse rather than your wallet best, and personally I think I will stick to balancer as one of mine can be iffy about supplements resulting in expensive trial and error, but its good to know Im not losing out on huge amounts of money! :D

Ps I dont know of any other pros/cons feed wise to using vit and mineral supplements or balancers this is purely a cost based analysis :)
 
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As stated baileys lo-cal balancer :) you can google it theres loads of info on the baileys website. Essentially something to provide the vitamins and minerals the horse may be deficient in and also containing oil, protein and fibre. If you google again there are also articles by nutritionists explaining when you should use a balancer- I use one for mine as none of them recieve the recommended quantities of their feed which if fed in recommended amounts should contain all the vitamins and minerals they need (I just feed chaff). So they have a fistful of (low calorie) chaff with balancer though I could just feed balancer if I wished. I couldnt find the list of ingredients on the global herbs website to compare but instead used another similar mineral and vitamin product (which didnt state on website amount to be fed so couldnt cost it!) and aside from the balancer containing protein, fibre and oil both the balancer and vitamin/mineral supplement contained the same vitamins and minerals. Of course the difficulty is knowing whether your horse is deficient and if so in what which is why I looked at the situations in which you should feed balancer before using it. I guess in theory analysing your hay/haylage and grass is ideal but I have to swap suppliers for my hay sometimes so its difficult. Hope that helps? :)

Edit to "PS" at bottom of original post- I meant I am sure there are advantages/disadvantages to using a balancer rather than a vit/mineral supplement and vice versa.
 
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Why would you feed cod-liver oil?

Horses are not evolved to digest fish products, they don't need them. Your multi-vitamin should be enough without adding anything to it, except the chaff which acts as a carrier. We use Pink Powder as it is lower in calories than feeding a balancer.
 
It was just an example oil for costing you could feed a different one if you wanted or not at all. I was comparing on a cost basis as oil is in the balancer to give a relatively fair price comparison. As said I feed a balancer and was only interested from a cost comparison perspective- if you didnt want to feed any oil minerals and vits would work out cheaper but not by a lot still in this average example. I was just interested as based on opinions Id heard I was expecting to see a noticeable saving and ergo judge for me whether it would be worthwhile swapping :)
 
Ps. I understand vit/min would be less calories if no oil added low calorie chaff used etc makes sense. Mine are holding their weight right on balancer and a fistful of chaff atm hence why I was comparing using hopefully more similar calorie options. I would defo swap to min/vit and handful of chaff if they got podge but as I realised not as an effort to save the pennies :)
 
I but naf general purose in a 2kg refil which is under £10 for 33 days supple. But say £10 as easier to work out, which makes it 30p a day. Iv used balancers and believe me they are expensive, also gobal cite is expensive so really not a good example.
I would rather pay £10 a month for vits than anything between £23 upwards for vits I'm afraid
 
Yeh sure you can probs get it cheaper. I just picked an example thats been recommended on here before then for me I would still have to add oil and chaff to the cost of the NAF. Its just not a huge saving I thought it might be. Interestingly the NAF has some different vits/mins to the balancer and vice versa but it likely all does the same stuff. Also based on the amounts on website it would only last me approx 22days so working out my calcs- would cost me £0.45 naf per day £0.23 average oil so total £0.68 plus the extra chaff I would have to feed with it (i know most people who use it want it for lower calories so wouldnt add more chaff but costing for me and a like to like comparison to balancer). So essentially its not going to end up far off the £0.86 that balancer costs me.

The equimins works out well at approx £0.66 per day but I personally prefer to feed a little more volume as mine are fed twice a day and 40g of feed in their buckets in the morning and evening isnt a lot really. Its personal choice I guess although this option does save you some money :) thanks for pointing it out I may consider it in the spring when they go back out at night and are fed in the field and once per day as it will be much easier to feed and not have to wait around for ages to check one of them is not finished and bullying another off! :)
There are pros and cons to everything, for me its just getting the balance between something that I know works and fits my current management scheme without costing me the earth so I think for the winter thats still going to be balancer :)
 
just realised I should say I used a 1.5kg tub for NAF to work it out. Would probs then save a bit with refill packs but isnt going to be miles out on cost :). Im on a phone too, spelling and punctuation is a right pain!! :)
 
You need to compare what is actually in the balancers to compare cost effectively. Some are low on the more expensive minerals and high in things like iron which is cheap. Most horses don't need extra iron as it's bloomin everywhere. :rolleyes:
Not sure about Bailey's but Top spec comes in with a decent balance of good quality minerals I believe. However a balancer is balanced to itself not necessarily to the forage a horse is eating. You usually get what you pay for...

Oh and of course some don't suit some horses.
 
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Pegasus Health make a 4kg vitamin called PegaVite - seems that this one knock the spots off all the others with a very high spec and very competitively priced :) 4kg is only £17.95

I used to use the globalvite but when you look at the spec it is probably the lowest along with NAF - both of these are expensive too!!!!!!

You can buy PegaVite from amazon here:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Pegasus-Health-PegaVite-4-kg/dp/B00792F3JK
 
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