Controversial - nutrition!

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becca_22

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Hi everyone,

This might be a bit of a controversial one, but I hope it doesn't get too heated.

I just wanted to get everyone opinion's as to why many horse owners don't get proper help and advice relating to their horse's nutrition. I've heard a lot of people say things like "i asked my BHS instructor" or "I read a few articles online". In your BHS Stage 2, you learn to pull a horse's shoe off but that doesn't make you a farrier! And most (I hope) owners wouldn't dream of letting their instructor shoe their horses if they weren't also a farrier. And most people wouldn't read a few online articles about equine dentistry, and then muck about with their horse's teeth... so why do so many people feel that nutrition is that simple that anyone can have a stab at it?
 
becca_22 said:
... so why do so many people feel that nutrition is that simple that anyone can have a stab at it?
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Because it is.

Most horses will do really well on grass and ad lib hay or haylage.

Fat ones need restricting. Thin ones will usually do fine given some oats.

Only people with difficult to feed horses and those of us with bad mineral imbalances in our grazing and water need to know more.

We've been feeding horses fine for centuries without feed company 'experts' telling us that we need their expensive feeds and balancers.
 
ycbm said:
Because it is.

Most horses will do really well on grass and ad lib hay or haylage.

Fat ones need restricting. Thin ones will usually do fine given some oats.

Only people with difficult to feed horses and those of us with bad mineral imbalances in our grazing and water need to know more.

We've been feeding horses fine for centuries without feed company 'experts' telling us that we need their expensive feeds and balancers.
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^^^^ spot on. Horse feed companies have created a huge market for stuff that the vast majority of horses DO NOT NEED. There are far too many obese horses as it is. If your horse is fat, feed it less and work it more. If it's thin, feed it!
 
People cannot easily access unbiased info on nutrition other than looking online or asking someone experienced, there are very few independent nutritionists and most owners do not require in depth help to feed a leisure horse, the feed companies all offer advice but most will be promoting their own products and many seem to want us to feed huge quantities of compound feed to horses that are in light work.

I don't think feeding is in anyway comparable to shoeing, most horses are perfectly healthy on no more than grass and hay but do require their feet done professionally, I think feeding the average horse should be simple but it has become more complicated because feed companies are in the business to make money out of owners who want to do their best for the horse, the best may not be what the feed company recommends.
 
ycbm said:
Because it is.

Most horses will do really well on grass and ad lib hay or haylage.

Fat ones need restricting. Thin ones will usually do fine given some oats.

Only people with difficult to feed horses and those of us with bad mineral imbalances in our grazing and water need to know more.

We've been feeding horses fine for centuries without feed company 'experts' telling us that we need their expensive feeds and balancers.
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I agree wholeheartedly. A bit of commonsense goes a long way when you are feeding horses.
 
I agree that it probably should be quite simple, but as has already been pointed out, there are a lot of overweight horses in this country! I've heard of all sorts of things, like cobs that hack out in walk & trot only x3 per week being fed ungodly amounts competition mix and it just makes me think there are people out there who really could use some slightly more reliable advice than wherever they seem to be getting theirs from at the moment!
 
becca_22 said:
I agree that it probably should be quite simple, but as has already been pointed out, there are a lot of overweight horses in this country! I've heard of all sorts of things, like cobs that hack out in walk & trot only x3 per week being fed ungodly amounts competition mix and it just makes me think there are people out there who really could use some slightly more reliable advice than wherever they seem to be getting theirs from at the moment!
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IMHO the feed companies are to blame for that. The recommended amounts of feed are huge, far too much for the average leisure horse doing average work, which in most cases is light work. And then there are those owners who think that because they are bringing their horses back into work, after winter, or some other lay off and want to get them fit need things like 'conditioning mix', when in fact their horses don't need any more condition, they just need more work, carefully graduated to get the horses fit.
 
The problem is the people with overweight hacks frequently do not know they have an issue unless someone points it out to them, I used to tell someone every time I saw them that their cob was obese yet it fell on deaf ears despite them asking me for advice on anything they were unsure of this one issue was not addressed and it is still obese, how it has not had laminitis I have no idea but it survives.

Many owners are totally unaware that their horse is fat, they may be ignorant, deluded or in denial but until feed companies actively promote feeding less, or even more radically nothing, there will continue to be overweight horses whose owners follow feeding guidelines advised by these companies, it is something that PC/ RC/RS/ YO's/ instructors should be more prepared to comment on but they may still find the owners think it doesn't apply to them.
 
ycbm said:
Because it is.

Most horses will do really well on grass and ad lib hay or haylage.

Fat ones need restricting. Thin ones will usually do fine given some oats.

Only people with difficult to feed horses and those of us with bad mineral imbalances in our grazing and water need to know more.

We've been feeding horses fine for centuries without feed company 'experts' telling us that we need their expensive feeds and balancers.
Click to expand...


yep, like saddle fitting-for most horses it isn't rocket science.
 
Well I wouldn't practice dentistry on my kids either but I don't feel the need to consult a nutritionist in order to feed them!
 
I dont trust nutritionists if im honest. I had one for my minis once, and the amount of food they were telling me to feed them would have them all dead in a week. Im old school, i don't like horses eating too much hard feed id rather give a balancer and let them free roam and pick the grass and weeds and hedges. If they need a bit of weight, they get some linseed and beet threw in, and forage upped or changed to haylage.
 
I think that a lot of owners find it difficult to ignore the advertising - there's a lovely lady on my yard who wanted to give her elderly horse some pep so fed her on competition mix, and was disappointed that she didn't turn into a competition horse.. the horse is 25 and winding down. It's hard to acknowledge that nothing is going to change that, I guess, if you believe what it says on the feed sacks.

Whenever people ask me what I feed mine, who look really well and perform nicely, they seem to lose interest and want to feed something with a nice picture and exciting name on the sack ;) I feed grass nuts and oats mainly :p

but they can't believe that a horse could do without a nice coloured fancy smelling mix, or somehow think that feeding your horse oats is going to send it totally wild (do you go mad if you have porridge for breakfast?!)

I think the adverts are really shocking tbh, people want to believe there is a magical fix for everything (other than more work/more hay/more training) and feed manufacturers really have skillfully tapped into that desperation :(
 
Because it is that simple. Most equine nutritionists are biased at best, and entirely wrong in their advice at worst. Many encourage feeding ungodly amounts of hard feed from whatever company they work for, when most horses cope just fine on ad-lib forage. The problem we have in this country is that a massive number of our equines are grossly obese, so reps desperate to make a sale do nothing but contribute to the problem.
 
Ambers Echo said:
Well I wouldn't practice dentistry on my kids either but I don't feel the need to consult a nutritionist in order to feed them!
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Absolutely.

But when my daughter decided that she wanted to become vegan, I sent her to talk to a nutritionist.

Ordinary situation: no need for specialist advice.

Pickiness (whether a human refusing meat and dairy produce or a horse refusing grass, hay and straw): get advice.

But I'm imagining a situation where the equine nutritionist is not a an employee of a feed company (and possibly getting a commission on sales).
 
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Every year the Royal Dick Vet School in Edinburgh do a free online Nutrition course. So if you want to know more without paying and give yourself more of a clue then sign up for it this year.

It's not really rocket science though!
 
Someone asked me what I feed my TB to have such a nice soft coat. My answer: not much, just balancer and a handful of chaff, and ad lib hay.
I said the soft coat was probably from her breed, not what I feed her.

I suppose it’s easy to get sucked in to feed adverts, it’s one area of horse care where we have control and influence. I guess we would love to be able to make our horses more calm / athletic / supple etc etc just by changing what we feed. Sadly it’s not usually that easy.
 
Balancers are a new development, too. They didn't even exist for the first twenty five years I kept horses. I can't get my head around feeding a full RDA of all sorts of stuff which it isn't even known that a horse is short of.
 
ycbm said:
Balancers are a new development, too. They didn't even exist for the first twenty five years I kept horses. I can't get my head around feeding a full RDA of all sorts of stuff which it isn't even known that a horse is short of.
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True really, but i do like it. I feed my foals a handful (literally) of Stamm30, and they definitely look show ready after a few weeks on it. Its too expensive for me to ever think of giving it to my 17hher. He gets a dreaded mix, but for him its the only one i have found that helps him keep weight and have a calm but energetic outlook on life. Others blow his mind thus dont help weight gain, cause hes on the moon stressing it all off. But he still only gets about 3/4-1 scoop a day in winter, so 1/4 of what the RDA on the bag is. I could never imagine feeding four scoops of mix to a horse in one day..
 
Agree with MP - people want to believe that they can do something proactive to make their horse higher performing/more energetic/fitter/better behaved/healthier /whatever else when actually the things that will do that are gradual, somewhat mundane puzzle pieces that all eventually come together.

I feed my horses a very boring diet, and like MP I can see people who ask being visibly disappointed as there isn't even a brand name to be interested by...but then I'm the same with barefoot hooves - people always think I'm going to tell them something terribly interesting and complicated about managing the barefoot hoof, but in truth I've got nothing. It's so long since I had a shod horse I can't really remember if there is anything interesting anymore
 
Ambers Echo said:
Well I wouldn't practice dentistry on my kids either but I don't feel the need to consult a nutritionist in order to feed them!
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This. Nobody's ever told me what to feed my children, obviously I have common sense and you can read up on the subject just as you can with horse nutrition. What I dont understand is some people who allow the yard owner for example to decide what to feed their horse. Ive known of a few people who have questioned their horses behaviour then realised the YO was feeding their horses something unsuitable which heated their already quite fizzy horse... they'd never thought to look at the feed. I find that weird to not seem to care what your horse is getting.
 
Knowing some of the advice handed out by feed company nutritionists I think most people would be better off making their own decisions.

On the basis that I do both the nutrition maths and trim his hooves we must be a lost cause completey :D.
 
EKW said:
Every year the Royal Dick Vet School in Edinburgh do a free online Nutrition course. So if you want to know more without paying and give yourself more of a clue then sign up for it this year.

It's not really rocket science though!
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I did this course. It is excellent.
 
Well mine has been on the exact same feed for the past 8 years lol. I feed less or more depending on his workload. His workload has been a mix of eventing international, county showing, pony clubbed, dressage champs right down to hacking occasionally over the years, the same feed for all but the amount fed changed. I don’t need a nutritionist to tell me what or how to feed! I can judge by eye if i feel he needs more or less.

The biggest change he’s had in his food over the 8 years is that i added chaff the other day, not because he needs it, but because it slows him down even more (he eats at a normal speed lol) but because the alpacas weren’t eating their food fast enough so billy ended up scoffing most of theirs too :p

Must admit when i asked alpaca people for advice on what horse friendly foods i could feed them that also don’t cost my income for the month, they got a bit, er, mumsnetty?!
Thankfully there are alpaca horse owners who gave me some great ideas :p
 
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ester said:
Knowing some of the advice handed out by feed company nutritionists I think most people would be better off making their own decisions.

On the basis that I do both the nutrition maths and trim his hooves we must be a lost cause completey :D.
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:eek3: :eek3:
Bet you didn't learn that in BHS stage 2 though did you? Probably dubious Internet sources played a part too :p
 
Something that really baffles me, is the number of people feeding their horses calmers or asking advice on the best calmer.
Yet their horse is fed on some highly molassed conditioning/competition mix, alfalfa, is stabled 20 hrs a day with a pure sugar stable lick, wears three rugs and has a twice weekly walk/trot round an arena.
Seriously, the mind boggles.
 
Notimetoride said:
Something that really baffles me, is the number of people feeding their horses calmers or asking advice on the best calmer.
Yet their horse is fed on some highly molassed conditioning/competition mix, alfalfa, is stabled 20 hrs a day with a pure sugar stable lick, wears three rugs and has a twice weekly walk/trot round an arena.
Seriously, the mind boggles.
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Indeed. & yes, mine is on a herbal calmer, but he eats grass & hay with a handful of chaff & some unmolassed beet just to carry his herbs.
 
Dave's Mam said:
Indeed. & yes, mine is on a herbal calmer, but he eats grass & hay with a handful of chaff & some unmolassed beet just to carry his herbs.
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They do have a place (I've used them myself on occasions in the past) but I see many people creating an incredibly fizzy horse, then trying to feed it a calmer.
 
What I learned / confirmed after doing the Dick Veterinary course is that Fibre is King. Hard work for a horse is one hell of a lot more than you think it is & that even horses competing regularly can do so on a fibre (good quality forage) diet alone.
 
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