Controversial - nutrition!

I have consulted someone, purely because I keep mine at home on a grass-only diet (no hay the vast majority of the time, and when they get hay it is usually cut from our fields). So I went to the trouble of a grazing analysis and feed plans from Forage Plus. I can confidently say they are not just sales agents, because I was already feeding their balancer and they advised me to continue feeding it but at half the recommended rate.

I'm probably not the best to answer the OP's question though as I don't get "proper help and advice" about very much! Call me a cynic, but I'm not inclined to trust "experts". Obviously sometimes you really do need an expert (e.g. a vet) for some things, but most things are easier than people like to make out and half the people that do the easy stuff for others don't do it right.

I don't remember learning to pull a shoe for my BHS Stage 2 (though I did it many years ago so I guess I did) but I have trimmed my unshod horses feet myself for years.
 
A feed company rep with a weighbridge was at our yard recently. My horse is apparently on the "good" side. When asked what I feed, I told her Topspec Comp balancer at half rations and it was suggested that the balancer be changed to their balancer and increased to full rations, while cutting down the adlib hay. Because half rations of balancer mean that my horse isn't getting enough vitamins, even though she's shiny, happy and full of energy. So that is why many people won't take advice, because it's crap.
 
Elbie said:
Unrelated to horses but reminds me of when we took the pup for his 1st year check up. Vet gave him a clean bill of health, remarked on how well he looked, perfect weight etc then asked what we fed him. When we told him he recommended we use a better food. We pointed out that he'd just said how great he looked so clearly it was doing something! People get so hung up on particular brands/types of food etc it almost becomes auto pilot and not looking at what is in front of you
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That'll be because the large majority of vets are endorsed by feed makers such as Purina etc.
 
just to answer your question as one who doesn't consult feed companies...

My horse will do perfectly well on grass and ad lib haylage and needs nothing else really, but I give him a basic balancer and some chaff to mix it in, just a very small amount, twice a day. The yard I'm on buy bulk from a feed company and the balancer was selected by the YO, working with the feed company to provide the best solution for the grass the horses are on (Cheshire so lots of natural salt and minerals in the grass and he is no longer interested in the salt lick he was addicted to at our old yard when his turnout was restricted). I'm happy with the look, smell and quality of the feed he gets.

I have spoken to feed companies in the past because he is a little bigger than he should be but they all recommended a balancer and a low calorie chaff to deliver it. He's young, healthy, happy and looking very shiny and well (he's dropped a bit of weight over the winter, not as much as I'd hoped) so I didn't change from what the yard suggested. He has no complex needs and I get him weighed yearly. What he really needs is more exercise so I pay for the yard staff to work him when I can't and I take him on long walk and trot hacks on the weekend to burn off some calories.
 
i think feeding horses is an art.

to get the horse the horse looking truly superb, lean and and muscled, shiny and energetic, and the right energy to perform its work is what i am aiming for, and its not that easy! it takes lots of thought and knowledge of each in individual animal and dare i say it experimentation, well for me it does.

that`s where i have a problem with nutritionists, they don`t know the horse in question, maybe they can offer solutions to certain deficiencies though
 
9tails said:
A feed company rep with a weighbridge was at our yard recently. My horse is apparently on the "good" side. When asked what I feed, I told her Topspec Comp balancer at half rations and it was suggested that the balancer be changed to their balancer and increased to full rations, while cutting down the adlib hay. Because half rations of balancer mean that my horse isn't getting enough vitamins, even though she's shiny, happy and full of energy. So that is why many people won't take advice, because it's crap.
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Yep I had exactly the same experience at a camp. Perfect weight. Gleaming with health. Energetic without being fizzy. But apparently I needed to increase the hard feed to give her 'enough' as she was not getting the RDAs of various things from hard feed.
 
It's like any living being - we all have individual metabolic rates so there is a degree of trial and error to get to know a new horse to get it in the optimum condition for it's job. As others have said nutritionists don't know the individual horse so their advice has to be generalised relating to "the average horse" which I doubt exists! As a child I could have eaten anything and remained stick thin however my friend ate far less than I did and was always considered fat _ I would have been a poor doer and she was definitely a good doer!

Developing an eye for correct condition isn't difficult, you just need to be observant and know to factor in weather, age, workload etc before making changes and treat every horse as an individual.
 
Ok, I'm going to be controversial here too!

I think this whole discussion is really about information overload. We live in an age over information overload, and most people have no or a poor education in how to evaluate information and do research. Nutrition (or anything related to a living organism) is an incredibly complicated topic, but complicated does not necessarily mean relevant. Most of the time, horses (or humans, for that matter), function perfectly well despite not really understanding how the body/digestion works in detail. Except sometimes they don't, and that's when you need the experts with that detailed knowledge.

I think what's going on is that people tend to fall into a few camps when they are overwhelmed with information (in this case about nutrition):
a) They deny/discount/gloss over the fact that it's a complicated topic, and pretend that everybody should be just fine if they just followed THE solution (feed grass, feed hay - single solution working for all), and everything else is window dressing. That approach is probably fine for the majority of horses, but not for the delicate flowers/difficult circumstances. It discounts that there are exceptions to the rule.
b) They mistake things being complicated with things being relevant, and try to micromanage everything about their horse's diet, even though that's a) impossible and b) probably not necessary in many cases. ("How can anyone who isn't a trained specialist put together a diet for a horse?")
c) Those who are so fed up by it all, they just want one simple solution and are uncomfortable with anything that includes qualifications/compromises/ifs&buts/lots of discussion or opposing viewpoints. Ready victims to the PR gang from the feed companies, who are happy to sell a "simple" solution for virtually any problem.

(BTW, the above is not meant to point a finger at anyone in particular - I'm just trying to characterise typical responses as I perceive them.)

I think the solution lies in better education on how to educate yourself. There's nothing wrong with the internet as an information source - if you know how to use it. There are proper scientific studies and course material out there alongside the blogs/social media/uninformed opinion pieces. And people need to become more comfortable living without absolutes, and be willing to use their own grey cells to form an educated opinion, rather than waiting for someone to hand them a ready-made answer. Experts are great, but will be the first ones to acknowledge the limitations of their expertise, or a particular study, for example. It's still up to us to ask them what they base their recommendations on, and make up our minds whether that sounds reasonable or not.
IMO, feeding a horse is pretty straight forward most of the time. It's good to have enough insight though to recognise when a closer look may be necessary, and to be able to evaluate information put in front of you (recommendations by other people/professionals, reading feedbag labels etc.).
 
iron is another thing we have had lying water the resulting dried oout puddle is iron oxide shows how high the iron is in our fields
 
I think a lot of problems can come from being on a large yard with a load of voices in your ear. People telling you to feed this and that and giving a load of conflicting opinions.
I certainly also think that nutritionists can be a problem.
I've had two nutrition yard visits by two people from the same feed company. Think popular feed, yellow bags! One was last year, the weigh bridge wasn't working, fair enough. The woman then asked me the usual questions: age, breed, workload, what is she like; stressy, chilled? and what I fed. After we went through this she spent the next ten minutes pretty much slagging off Bailey's (the brand I was feeding) but not really drawing any comparisons or saying anything that made me want to swap over.

In total contrast, we had another yard visit yesterday. Understood that Chilli is not looking her best at the moment as she has only been back in work after her break for a few weeks. Also understood and explained how she might not weigh in so differently to how she does now if she was fully muscled again but that it would be okay because she wouldn't be as fatty. She came in at 536kg. She's a 15.3hh 17yo TB who is more on the chubby side than the weedy one!

Instead of finding out what I feed and telling me how rubbish it is with no real backing, she explained that what I'm feeding is good and my horse is healthy and that I could happily continue feeding it if I wanted to with no ill effect (apart from taking the conditioning cubes out, but we knew that anyway :p), but then went on to give a breakdown of cost effectiveness and how the feeds she was recommending were better. All of this with tables/easy to understand comparisons. There was no pressure, just an 'if you want to try it, this is what i'd recommend' attitude. As a result I've bought a bag of the Senior balancer today and am looking forward to giving it a try!

The trouble is (and I'm guilty of this one) it's nice to write your horse's name on a bucket that's a nice colour and leave it sat all nicely with the cover on ready to fed in the morning. But if your horse doesn't need to be fed, it doesn't need to be fed!


People
 
Haha. Yes, definitely recognise the slagging off everyone else without offering much substance behaviour from the contact I've had with "yellow bags" feed reps!
 
PapaverFollis said:
Haha. Yes, definitely recognise the slagging off everyone else without offering much substance behaviour from the contact I've had with "yellow bags" feed reps!
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Such a shame really, as I definitely wouldn't have been trying this feed which might benefit my horse (and, let's face it, bring the yellow bag company another customer) if this lovely rep hadn't made up for her colleague!
 
supsup said:
Ok, I'm going to be controversial here too!

I think this whole discussion is really about information overload. We live in an age over information overload, and most people have no or a poor education in how to evaluate information and do research. Nutrition (or anything related to a living organism) is an incredibly complicated topic, but complicated does not necessarily mean relevant. Most of the time, horses (or humans, for that matter), function perfectly well despite not really understanding how the body/digestion works in detail. Except sometimes they don't, and that's when you need the experts with that detailed knowledge.

I think what's going on is that people tend to fall into a few camps when they are overwhelmed with information (in this case about nutrition):
a) They deny/discount/gloss over the fact that it's a complicated topic, and pretend that everybody should be just fine if they just followed THE solution (feed grass, feed hay - single solution working for all), and everything else is window dressing. That approach is probably fine for the majority of horses, but not for the delicate flowers/difficult circumstances. It discounts that there are exceptions to the rule.
b) They mistake things being complicated with things being relevant, and try to micromanage everything about their horse's diet, even though that's a) impossible and b) probably not necessary in many cases. ("How can anyone who isn't a trained specialist put together a diet for a horse?")
c) Those who are so fed up by it all, they just want one simple solution and are uncomfortable with anything that includes qualifications/compromises/ifs&buts/lots of discussion or opposing viewpoints. Ready victims to the PR gang from the feed companies, who are happy to sell a "simple" solution for virtually any problem.

(BTW, the above is not meant to point a finger at anyone in particular - I'm just trying to characterise typical responses as I perceive them.)

I think the solution lies in better education on how to educate yourself. There's nothing wrong with the internet as an information source - if you know how to use it. There are proper scientific studies and course material out there alongside the blogs/social media/uninformed opinion pieces. And people need to become more comfortable living without absolutes, and be willing to use their own grey cells to form an educated opinion, rather than waiting for someone to hand them a ready-made answer. Experts are great, but will be the first ones to acknowledge the limitations of their expertise, or a particular study, for example. It's still up to us to ask them what they base their recommendations on, and make up our minds whether that sounds reasonable or not.
IMO, feeding a horse is pretty straight forward most of the time. It's good to have enough insight though to recognise when a closer look may be necessary, and to be able to evaluate information put in front of you (recommendations by other people/professionals, reading feedbag labels etc.).
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Good Post - I agree
 
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