Feed. Again,sorry!

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beingachicken

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Really briefly horse has had on and off slight lameness for ages. Decided to try the trimmer route having got no where really with different types of shoes etc. (Not really afternoon advice on this!)
Was Advised to treat as a laminitic.
So changed my feed which was Hifi lite, high fibre nuts and linseed, due to the fact it contains molasses and alfalfa.
swapped to Emerald green grass nuts, Thunderbrooks chaff and linseed.
This combo kind of doesn’t sit well with me. I can’t get my head round feeding grass products to see if it helps with possible laminitis!
So I’m definitely wanting to drop the grass nuts. In this kind of situ which is worst, pure grass nuts or HF which contain molasses?
Also is the Thunderbrooks chaff really suitable?
I chose these after looking into barefoot diets to try and improve foot quality (not particularly because I’m a barefoot fan)
Trying to find feed that contains no molasses or alfalfa is difficult! Pure feeds? Or swap back to the original diet?
 
if you have access to emerald green products their meadow magic nuts would be more suitable. the grass nuts are >10% sugar starch and you should be aiming for <10%

I don't see the advantage of feeding chaff and pellets :p though the chaff is generally fine but varies a bit. I don't feed TB products for different reasons and opt for agrobs instead personally. Not all grass chaff is the same but plenty is appropriate to feed to 'laminitic'

Personally I don't find finding feeds to difficult, though I do have a fusspot but that is probably just because we've been doing it a few more years :).
 
I think I feed chaff and nuts/pellets because that’s always been the done thing ? (maybe I can change that now!)
Can I ask why you don’t feed TB stuff?
Do you have any views on Pure feeds?
My local shop only sells grass nuts but I imagine could order in the ones you suggested if I asked. I’ll go look on the website now..
 
if they stock emerald green then they'd be able to get the meadow magic in for you. I sometimes buy them online from EG themselves :)

I also don't see the point in feeding chaff and nuts but I know other people do. I don't feed chaff to anything, haven't done for years as the nuts are cheaper :p
 
I could certainly cut it down, I don’t think I’d like to stop completely as I did have a horse that used to choke, a few times badly and it’s just left me a bit wary.
funny how habits stick though. I feed like that mainly because, years back the first yard I was at everyone fed the standard scoop of molli, scoop of sugar beet (proper pellets!) and a scoop of mix or nuts! The only variations were the hunter/competing horses got competition mix ? id never even really thought of it or doing differently before.
 
No TB stuff because they have a history of threatening people with legal action if they dare suggest their product might not be ideal for a particular horse/location/forage analysis, and behaving terribly :p rather than the products.

Frankie likes pure feeds, we used to borrow some when we needed to feed drugs :p
Personally I think it can end up being a really expensive way of feeding what you could provide/mix yourself and I don't think their balancer is great. But in general they aren't 'bad'

Any 'grass' products I have fed have essentially been there as a base for what I want to also include, in part because of the fussiness.
So essentially my feeding regimes have been grass chaff/unmolassed beet as req/oats as req/linseed/balancer.
Laterally due to lack of teeth and work that has become soaked grass pellets (I use agrobs wiesencobs but he does eat the meadow magic too), linseed/balancer/bute :p.

Our local doesn't keep massive stock but can order both the meadow magic and the agrobs with minimal notice :)
 
yeah it definitely depends on your horse, all of mine are pretty slow eaters anyway so unlikely to choke. My YO still feeds that diet to the full liveries ;)
 
Your last post made me chuckle, I was brought up feeding a mass mix of soaked beet, pony nuts and bran to everything.
The oldies got a bit of 16+ added
and a few got barley.
As a grown up the bran got switched to hifi
then graduated to the other options ;)

also some of the hifi range non-molassed range is fine. I'm not particularly anti-alfalfa but have stuck with what works.
 
Oh ok, I think I may have seen bit of a nasty thread on FB actually involving them a while back now you say, at the time I didn’t use their stuff so didn’t take much notice.
So out of interest what would you feed my horse?! He’s not overly a good or poor doer. I have looked at Agrobs and like the sound of it but can’t find it locally.
 
If you can't find agrobs locally and you don't have an old fusspot stuck in his ways (I could get it locally when we were in wilts but initially no suppliers in somerset so I ordered direct) no need to feed it :).

I might have missed the earlier thread about your horse/what you do.
 
ester said:
If you can't find agrobs locally and you don't have an old fusspot stuck in his ways (I could get it locally when we were in wilts but initially no suppliers in somerset so I ordered direct) no need to feed it :).

I might have missed the earlier thread about your horse/what you do.
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He just hacks. Lightly at that, can be very fiery though. I mean I’d like to do more if I can sort out this footiness
 
I’ll go back and look at the direct ordering, I’ve only done stockist searches and actually there is one closer than I realised but still quite a trek.
 
beingachicken said:
I had thought of kwikbeet or similar. Would that be enough to keep weight up? I always think of beet as a “side dish” ?
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Most unmolassed beet has a calorie count (dry weight) of about 12 MJDE/kg which is equivalent to some conditioning feeds but with the advantage that the calories come from highly digestible fibre rather than sugar or starch.

We have one horse who events to 2* and hunts on beet, linseed and a balancer because he needs a low starch/sugar diet.
 
beingachicken said:
Do you have any views on Pure feeds?
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Yep, I use Pure Feeds on all 3 of my beasts and they seem to thrive on it. I started on their Fibre Balance originally as my mare had quite bad ulcers, but now I feed all of them the same. They always wolf it down, their coats are shiny and they keep weight well in the winter.

I like it also because it's low cal, low starch, no molasses, no alfalfa, no NIS, has added mins/vits (no iron), added biotin, added pre/pro biotic, and it's recommended for lamititics and ulcer prone horses.

Call them for advice - I have done in the past, and they're really helpful.

.
 
Sorry to jump in on this thread but I have just started to feed Micronised Linseed for general coat shine and some weight gain (although I don't want him to explode in weight!) Would anyone be able to help me with how much to feed?

Online the recommendation seems to be from 100ml, to 50g, to 800-1000ml to 1 mug full... I am just not sure. Large 750kg-ish horse in 4 times a week schooling/hacking work.
 
In hunting work in winter I fed a 450kg ish short arse 4 mugs a day.
iirc in summer he got 2 mugs a day.
now he gets less than a mug a day (I think!) .

Original rec was 200g per day, I did measure how much that was at one point, in 2013 :D (I only know that as searched my emails ;) )
 
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