calm and condition!? Calm! my A**e.....

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Brambridge04

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Ok, so i am looking after a horse for a friend of mine, who has calm and condition, with alfa a chaff and chopped carrots for his dinner....

OH MY GOD, he is rude, hyper, bolshy, generally nasty!

Someone said "god knows why she gives him that c+c he doesnt need it" so i asked friend, if she wanted it cutting out due to spring grass coming through etc (basically for my own curiosty to see if it made a difference)

Last week he has had a handful of grass nuts, and a scoop of chaff, with a chopped carrot in...

He is much more relaxed, friendly, patient, like a different animal!

Any one else experienced this with calm and condition?
 
I have fed C&C (was recommended by many) since getting my boy about 3 months ago and now you mention it his temprement has changed- nothing nasty just more 'keen'- he used to be horizontal- i thought it was just because he's so fit now... maybe now he has the condition I'll try something else- just to see...:confused:
 
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I used it but my horse was fed by someone else, who didn;t wet it and he sudffered serious choke. Cost me just short of £1000 in vets bills. So I changed!

Maybe its calm becuase they can barely breathe?
 
that could explain why my girl has been very grumpy and too full of beans as it were:p. she gets a&p c&c too with just some chaff, only been on it 3 weeks and well what can i say, think im gonna try a diff type see if she goes back to norm :D
 
I had my boy on the baileys lo cal balancer.... That was all he got one cup 3x a day. Finances were a bit tight so I swapped him back to basic chaff and mix... Everyone has said how his mood improved when I did.

He was getting a bit too much for the grooms to handle on the days I don't do him. They were wanting to lead him out in a chifney.
 
OMG just spoke to our local feed shop...open till 6.30.... and i quote

"Well its "calm and conditioning" in comparision to other conditioning feeds, but if the dont need the condition, and your using it for calming effect, it will actually hype them up"
 
I feed it to a couple of older mares (21 and 23) and a couple of youngsters with no noticeable explosions! Have used it for about three years . Manners on youngsters are fine.
 
I used to feed it to my tb throughout the winter months, he would be absolutely fine, lovely to handle/ride etc then as soon as spring grass came through, he turned into a fruitloop (more than usual) so I took him off it and he changed back into a calmer horse again. I'm having the same problem again as have been feeding A&P fast fibre and once again horse has turned into a fruitloop, so time for a change.

email A&P and tell them what your horse is like and see what else they recommend.
 
I have had my mare on the A+P Ride and Relax and Fast Fibre all winter with good results, however she has never 'felt better' than she has the last month! I'm not sure if it is either feed making her bounce so much or not!
 
I was recommended c+c for my very thin mare when I got her. Complete waste of money. It didn't put any weight on her whatsoever and she wasn't that keen on it. Put her back on chaff, hi fibre cubes and speedibeet and her weight went on superbly - added to which she enjoyed eating it. Wouldnt' say c+c fizzed my mare up that much though....
 
I do wonder whether they have reformulated it because it definitely used to be about 19% starch, but now the website says 12%. It definitely used to have maize in it, don't know whether that is still the case.
 
I think as someone mentioned before C&C is meant to be a conditioning feed that doesn't contain barley (as normal conditioning feeds do). Barley can have a heating effect in some horses so I think that is where the calm comes from. It is quite high in sugar beet which is high in fibre fibre and has a relatively low oil, protein and energy content.

Just a note to say that minerals don't contain energy...they might help utilise energy to make it more available but they don't contain it themselves.
 
SunSmile said:
I have had my mare on the A+P Ride and Relax and Fast Fibre all winter with good results, however she has never 'felt better' than she has the last month!
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Totally agree with this. My mare has been on an extended hols for the last 3 months whilst I recovered from surgery and she has been out everyday, including during the snowing, for approx 12hrs/day. I've also included the new Hi-Fi non molases for additional baulk and stretch hay out. She was lunged 4 times last week and we only got bucks & squeals for two circles on day 1. I rode her on Saturday for 1/2hr and she was foot perfect.
 
Or it could have something to do with the carrots as well, the combination of both as well as the Alfa A could be the reason the horse has that little bit too much energy.
 
Haha! This made me iggle when I saw this.
I was recommended to use calm and condition, and did all the usual things of introducing it slowly into his normal feed, seeing how his behaviour was, but since I rode him everyday, and he was always forward and spooky I think it took a while for me to notice the big difference when he eventually went loopy after a couple of weeks and I couldnt get on him.

I'd never try anything like that again. Now I stick to traditional feeds and if I want to calm my horse, he'll get lunged till his legs fall off.

'Too much food, not enough work'

I figure if he's ona good diet, the condition will come. Barley rings have always seemd good for me. They are not too heating.

x x
 
Calm & Cond is NOT a calming feed! It is for horses that need condition on a decent exercise programme without the barley. I have never had a problem with it but then I feed my horses according to their weights, type and workload which is where alot of folk go wrong, feeding horses that don't have enough work and that don't need condition will inevitably go wild on it!

My youngsters for example (4/5yos) who are ridden 5/6 days a week an hour a day, hacked, jumped and do one comp a week have 1/4-1/2 of soaked c&c in a stubbs scoop and they look brilliant, incredibly shiny, happy and very well mannered! They go back to Alfa A Oil or ride and relax with added Soya oil as soon as they have put on sufficiant topline and condition.

All horses only need good quality fibre, pref in the form of Alfa A and/or a balancer to get all the nutrients they need. Horses aren't designed to digest carbs/statch/cereals especially horses in less than medium/heavy level work. Fats in the form of Omega Oils (Soya, linseed, Equijewel is good) should be introduced into the diet WAY before cereals should to add condition.
 
i've found if the horse is in full work and c&c is added and the energy is maintained and controlled then i've not had a problem, however if the c&c is being fed, not in full work or the energy isn't maintained or controlled then they horses have gone ''off their rocker''

i'll also never feed and alfafa based feed any more after previous experiences with my mare :)
 
To condition you need calories; calories = energy; energy is energy at the end of the day (albiet metabolised in different ways.... so yes agree with the "calmer than most coniditioners" logic if the horse actually needs conditioning)

However the net result of feeding this is not necessarily a calmer horse - fed up to the back teeth of seeing people with obese horses feeding this bloody stuff as they "need them to calm down".

Really think they need to rebrand the feed to stop owners seeing it as a way to calm their horses!! As the name IMO is very misleading.

Sorry mini rant. Someone who I ride for has just purchased some for her fat horses (that incidently don't even need the "calm" aspect like she thinks) that don't even need feeding as they are so obese it sometimes makes me feel sick. Gently tried to pursuade her it wasn't needed, but it angers me that this brand is quite obviously misleading.
 
Foaling Around- I agree with you, plus people also don't READ labels anymore and it is misleading called it calm and condition imo if you are ignorant to what it is actually meant for.

It winds me that people feed any kind of hard feed other than fibre or fibre based products on anything that isn't in medium -heavy work! And then complain there horses get colic/go fizzy/ get lami/ get fat/ stomach problems. Horses don't need anything but fibre- and they need at least 1% of their body weight in it per day.

Perhaps it needs to be called "Condition, Coat and Topline" with out the barley.....
 
Brambridge04 said:
Ok, so i am looking after a horse for a friend of mine, who has calm and condition, with alfa a chaff and chopped carrots for his dinner....

OH MY GOD, he is rude, hyper, bolshy, generally nasty!

Someone said "god knows why she gives him that c+c he doesnt need it" so i asked friend, if she wanted it cutting out due to spring grass coming through etc (basically for my own curiosty to see if it made a difference)

Last week he has had a handful of grass nuts, and a scoop of chaff, with a chopped carrot in...

He is much more relaxed, friendly, patient, like a different animal!

Any one else experienced this with calm and condition?
Click to expand...

de ja vu, this seems quite a common problem with this feed, exactly the same with my mare
 
when I read this title I actually lmao.....A lot of horses were changed to this at my last yard and it sent 90% of them nuts it didnt effect my 2 youngsters but my ID mare couldnt handle it at all....I wouldnt use it again found Readi mash much better in comparison.
 
alot of horses are overfed for there workload and the owners wonder why there horse is nuts, they then spend more money on a calmer they won't need if they just cut down the hard feed. Fibre (hay/haylage/straw/grass) is what horses need more than hard feed.
 
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