"Complete" feeds for horses / feeding advice (Pure Feed)

[TPO]

Edited to get rid of all my irrelevant blethering

****my actual point****

Are the Pure Feed ranges decent feeds for barefoot horses? Oh, and cost effective against mixing it all up yourself with Pro Earth, for example?

 

[PapaverFollis]

I think any complete feed seems to need feeding at a rather large volume to get the full whack of the vitamins and minerals... which is how balancers came into being. When I was working in the feed store I think we worked out that feeding expensive Saracens feeds was actually not as expensive as it looked because feed volumes were lower than other brands. I think one of the reasons it was a popular feed range was because most people feed a scoop per feed regardless of recommendations so with Saracens that was closer to the actual feed rate so the horses did better!

My approach now is a pony sized portion of a complete feed topped with minerals balanced to forage. I feel like the pony sized portions give even the big horses enough of most things and then the minerals fill in the blanks left by the forage. They are doing better with their small portion of complete feed than when the minerals were in a plain carrier! And they bliddy eat it which is the main thing for me after fighting with them over top chop zero and speedibeet.

I don't know if that answers your questions but it's the thoughts your post prompted!

 

[PinkvSantaboots]

I fed pure feeds for a while and both of mine were barefoot then and they were fine but you have to feed quite a bit to get all the full doses of vitamins and minerals, I only stopped feeding as only 1 feed shop stocked it and it was the furthest one away.

Agree about saracen a lot of the feed is a small yellow scoop to get the full dose.

 

[HappyHollyDays]

I like Pure Feeds for ease and my two are currently on a mug of Pure Fibre a day so a bag lasts a month but they also get a Hoof supplement and LiverAid which gives them the biotin, zinc, copper, VitE etc that they need as the quantities I feed don’t provide them with enough.

Both barefoot at the moment, one has EMS and lives on fresh air, B has had laminitis in the past even when skinny and fit and is going into composite shoes next week.

 

[dixie]

My first thought is why are you feeding them at all if they are all good doers ?

if it’s to get vit and mins in them, then just use a good quality chaff such as Dengie Meadow grass.

 

[I'm Dun]

My good doers get a tiny bit of speedi beet and a sprinkle of alfa a to carry the minerals, and the poor doer gets pink mash and sensi care as his feed and a big bucket of speedi beet with some alfa a and linseed. They all get salt.

I make my own balancer. Copper, zinc, MSM, vitamin e, magnesium, brewers yeast and linseed. They all look great, the TBs feet are unrecognisable and it costs me hardly anything

 

[TPO]

My first thought is why are you feeding them at all if they are all good doers ?

if it’s to get vit and mins in them, then just use a good quality chaff such as Dengie Meadow grass.

They're not, and never have, had all that. That is just an example of the difderent feeds that I have used at various times for various horses.

The fatty only gets a tiny bit of pink Mash as a carrier and only got the pellets when on a pelleted balancer.

Just feeding chaff with minerals isn't enough for the other two although they are fairly good doers. The big one was a bit underweight when we got him so had baileys ease and excel. He did well on that at the start of last year when he arrived and it decreased as grass came through. He doesn't need the rda amount though so was still getting a powder balancer and chaff so it worked out an expensive way to feed.

He's getting rda of soothe and Gain, along with ad-lib good hay, but doesn't look as good. He's also a bit fussy.

If a complete feed like Pure did what it said on the tin it should be an economical way of getting good calories and vit/mins into him.

 

[Zuzan]

I've found some of the supplements with yea-sacc are unpalatable and have found the stripped down PE mineral supplement Pro Mineral a good starting point..

In your shoes I would use Pro Mineral and Vit E .. mix up 5 days into pots with a mug of linseed to be added to soaked generic grass nuts and a spoonful of salt.
NB re the soaked grass nuts I've found the best method is to only just cover with water .. once soaked they are then a dryish crumble .. extra water can be added at feed time.

Also I've found ad lib hay, even when there is supposedly "no grass" for good doers is really too much.. especially if not in work. I would be feeding hay twice a day and not ad lib.

 

[Griffin]

I think all horses are individuals, if Pure Feeds seems to work best for your horse, keep feeding it! I don't think it is necessary to feed barefoot horses anything special unless their hooves are telling you otherwise (e.g. when I looked after a horse with soft hooves a few years ago, I did give him an extra hoof supplement from Feedmark and changed his management until we rectified the problem). I feed mine Spillers Lite and Lean and have done for several years now, which has (gasp) molasses in it and she has excellent hooves. I really like Clare MacLeod's approach to nutrition on FB, she is worth a read.

One thing I always do though is feed ad lib hay (soaked or mixed with straw if needed for chunkies) when stables and in the field if there is no grass because no one wants ulcers.

 

[isilme]

I try and keep my horses on a natural diet as best i can they are fed, dried grass plain nothing fancy just grass dried out, soaked grass nuts and a balancer to make sure they are getting all the extras they need that are no longer in our fields, i also love d&h healthy mash mine do really well on this its one of my favourite things helps bulk out the feed and has lots of herbs etc in it. Since feeding like this with adlib hay or haylage which I've always done my horses seem to be happy healthy and that goes for natives to performance horses.
Hope that helps? Oh and most are barefoot until they need studs or have an issue requiring shoes ?