Feed balancer: TopSpec or BlueChip?

But the thing I don't understand about most 'balancers' is that they shove everything in there, regardless of whether the horse needs it or not, and in weird quantities too. They seem to rely on people to think 'ooh, that's got everything in it' and just buy it so they don't have to think about what they're feeding.
 
Thats exactly my point Nocturnal - how does the tub of stuff you've bought balance what you're feeding, when someone else is feeding it but with a different diet.

The levels have to be so low so as not to cause a problem no matter what its mixed with that its totally pointless!

Also what EXACTLY are you balancing? Your bucket feed? Your forage? If your forage have you had it analysed to know what its high or low in? If not than you're guessing and could well be making some levels higher that are already too high!

Massive waste of money!
 
So I am a balancer fan more through clever marketing rather than actual knowledge on my part, please please correct me if I am wrong as I dont want to be wasting my money.

I thought a balancer was basically like a all round vitamin type supplement a bit like how I take a multivitamin every day for myself to make sure I getting vitamins as my diet is not the best.

Is that not what it gives the horse, all the vitamins it requires..???
 
I want to add:

So if I am wrong how can I
Make sure my boy is getting what he needs in his food, he is a growing 17hh Oldenburg who still needs to fill out lots and currently gets TS balancer, TS conditioning cubes , spillers conditioning fibre and speedy beat. what should I be giving him, any suggestions welcome please.
 
Ludoctro said:
I want to add:

So if I am wrong how can I
Make sure my boy is getting what he needs in his food, he is a growing 17hh Oldenburg who still needs to fill out lots and currently gets TS balancer, TS conditioning cubes , spillers conditioning fibre and speedy beat. what should I be giving him, any suggestions welcome please.
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I would say that there is nothing wrong with this diet, he seems to be getting a good level of the important fibre from it. The TS cubes contain a good level of calories with no vit and mins, these are supplied by the balancer, there may or may not be some vits you do not need (he may be getting a certain amount from his forage etc) but they will most def not be dangerous in any way to your horse, he is also getting good protein and calcium levels, although if I were being very picky I would prefer an alfalfa chop to give him a better quality protein.

Someone mentioned Vit C earlier in the post, VitC is one of the vits that cannot be manufactured within the body, therefore it does need to be added, anything not used, like all vits is excreted harmlessly. I have yet to see any non anecdotal evidence that VitC interferes with the uptake of any other Vit/Min.

Balancers have a very useful function and I do not believe it is all market hype, just make sure you read the labels as not all balancers are the same.
 
Ludoctro said:
So I am a balancer fan more through clever marketing rather than actual knowledge on my part, please please correct me if I am wrong as I dont want to be wasting my money.

I thought a balancer was basically like a all round vitamin type supplement a bit like how I take a multivitamin every day for myself to make sure I getting vitamins as my diet is not the best.

Is that not what it gives the horse, all the vitamins it requires..???
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I think the problem is that horses require certain minerals in specific ratios, as excesses in some can interfere with the absorption of others. As far as I can tell, feed companies seem to blatantly disregard this fact, other than the well-known calcium: phosphorus ratio. I guess they feel that they can safely ignore anything which isn't common knowledge :rolleyes:.

The most effective way of ensuring you are feeding correctly is to have an analysis done on your forage (grass/hay/haylage) and have a feed plan made up for you. But at the moment I'm using a supplement called pro-hoof, which was designed to balance typical UK forage by someone who doesn't have their head buried in the sand ;). It's working well enough for the moment, but no off the shelf supplement will ever be ideal, I'm afraid.
 
I think people under estimate the efficiency of horses to utilize the nutrients in their grass and hay/haylage.

A healthy horse up to moderate work should be fully capable of fulfilling their needs with only the addition of what is missing or out of balance in the forage they are getting.

Feeding horses is more art than science as most research is either non-existent or from the 1970s and 1980s!

I just think going in 'all guns blazing' with 10 different bags of stuff (full of grains and sugar) will often do more harm than good.

Horses in moderate to heavy work may require quick access sources of glucose - but there are ways of providing that easily, more cheaply and more holistically than 'Conditioning this and that'.
 
Amaranta said:
On paper, it is not heating as it contains no cereal grains, but I have deff had one get too excited on it. I believe that it possibly makes some feel a little too well and thus have a little too much energy :)
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Hee hee, try adding their Performance Cubes to it too - still no cereal & low starch/sugar etc but it's ROCKET FUEL :D
 
In order to help this discussion we thought it would be useful to present some of the facts:

At Blue Chip we are fully aware that our products are some of the most expensive on the market, but we are also aware that they are the most cost-effective, as they contain only the highest quality ingredients and the highest levels of active ingredients... so your horse is getting the benefits that you pay for.

All Blue Chip feed balancers are whole cereal and molasses free (since November 2011), meaning they have very low levels of sugar and starch.

Blue Chip feed balancers are the only feed balancers available in the UK to include the revolutionary new ingredient, nucleotides. Nucleotides are the building blocks of DNA and RNA
and are essential for cell replication. More information about these revolutionary ingredients can be found at www.bluechipfeed.com/nucleotides.

Blue Chip feed balancers are the only top selling balancers to include a natural, fruit derived form of Vitamin E in all the balancers, which is 4-6 times more bio-available to the horse than the synthetic form found in other feed balancers. So whilst other label declarations may show higher levels of Vitamin E the horse is getting less benefit from it. Vitamin E is a powerful anti-oxidant and is the cells first line of defence.

Comparing feed balancers on a chart can be useful when trying to decide which balancer to use, but it is important to understand why certain levels of vitamins and minerals have been included and in what form. Horses can only absorb a certain level of various vitamins and minerals and if you provide excess they will just be excreted. Hence it can look like a product is better as it has a higher level of a certain vitamin or mineral, but if it is above the level a horse can absorb, it will just get flushed out the other end! Some manufacturers fill their products with high levels of certain vitamins or minerals to look more impressive on the statutory label declaration, but this is of no benefit to the horse, so we decided it was a game that we did not want to play!

Vitamins and minerals also come in various forms of bio-availability to the horse, making certain ones, such as the organic, chelated forms the most available to the horse. So it is not just the numbers you need to look at, but the type of ingredient used - again, we formulate our products for the benefits of the horse, not to make a label look good!

If anybody would like any help or advice please call Blue Chip on 0114 2666200 or email info@bluechipfeed.com



NOTE TO FORUM ADMINISTRATOR: We are aware that sometimes administrators delete comments that are seen as blatant advertising. We hope that you do not see this as an ad, we just want to help put the record straight for the benefit of the discussion group.
 
Hi Bluechip. Good to see that you are willing to enter the discussion! There are some valuable pieces of information in this thread already, but for me the million dollar question still is...

'what is the balancer actually balanced to'

I'm interested to know now (even though i have no need to really, i don't actually own my own horse to feed, but i'm still following this thread with interest).

Thanks in advance
Trina x
 
trina1982 said:
Hi Bluechip. Good to see that you are willing to enter the discussion! There are some valuable pieces of information in this thread already, but for me the million dollar question still is...

'what is the balancer actually balanced to'
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I would also be interested in the answer to this.
 
I have a very good do-er pure Arab and she's on Bailey's Lo-Cal (recommended amount) + Biotin as her feet aren't as good as they could be + carrots and that's all, no chaff, no nothing and now she's out 24/7 not even hay (although she will get haylage if the threatened snow arrives ;) )and she looks wonderful :)
 
Blue Chip are continually assessing their formulations as we recognise that feeding trends change. This is why we have just re-formulated all of our products and for example Blue Chip Lami-light now has increased levels of nutrients, as we understand that horses and ponies that are prone to laminitis or those that are good doers, are usually on a restricted diet and will therefore be lacking in these essential vitamins and minerals.

It is impossible to create a balancer that is perfect for every individual horse, as they are all fed different qualities of fibre (hay, haylage, grass) and their individual existing vitamin, mineral and nutrients levels will be specific for each horse.

Based on this information we have designed our balancers to ‘balance’ out the diet of different ‘groups’ horses and ponies i.e. horses that are in light to medium work usually will have a good fibre diet but may be getting little or no hard feed, Blue Chip Original is designed for this type of horse. Older horses or ponies or those that are in a higher level of work require a higher level of vitamins and minerals, which is why Blue Chip Pro has an elevated level of these essential vitamins and minerals and also includes a prebiotic and a blood building formula; all designed to assist the requirements of this type of horse.

In an ideal world all horses and ponies would be blood tested, forage and grazing analyzed and constant assessments would be made; a feed programme could then be designed to ‘balance’ out their individual diet. Unfortunately this is not practical or possible for the majority of horse owners, which is why we have researched a wide range of the various types of horses and ponies and have designed balancers to help the majority of these horses. You will never get a perfectly balanced diet unless you can take all the above mentioned measures but by feeding a balancer, such as Blue Chip you will be nearer to imperfection than without!

I hope this is helpful
 
But your groups dont take into account whether the individuals in that group are on which brand of nut, which brand of chaff, and what each of those levels are.

Therefore a horse owners money is better spent on forage analysis so you KNOW you are actually getting it right.

Bluechip - you said that excess levels of minerals will be excreted - what you didnt mention is that if the forage is high in something like calcium this then inhibits the absorption of other minerals that the forage is lower in. So if your balancers have calcium in and up that level again, everything else is wasted.
 
I fed Blue Chip for a year with great results, I took him off it in Oct as he was gaining too much weight with the extended summer we had. I bought Global Herbs vit and mineral powder, just because it has less calories but I have to feed twice as much Hifi to get him to eat it as he doesnt like it, whereas he used to have a small handfull of HIfi with his cup of BC and love it. Shame because I would like to put him back on BC but he seems to be too much f a good doer to have hard feed.
 
Hi Angelz

Blue Chip Lami-light would be the ideal feed balancer for your horse, as it is a low calorie, low sugar, low starch (whole cereal and molasses free) balancer which will not encourage weight gain, whilst still ensuring a balanced diet.
 
Bluechip1 said:
Hi Angelz

Blue Chip Lami-light would be the ideal feed balancer for your horse, as it is a low calorie, low sugar, low starch (whole cereal and molasses free) balancer which will not encourage weight gain, whilst still ensuring a balanced diet.
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I'm not sure how you know this Bluechip when you presumably have no idea what Angelz's forage contains......
 
I agree with many things on this tread, I think a lot of horses are overfed and there are in fact very few that need hard feed I also think horses very rarely need the amount of feed suggested on the packets of feeds which is why I think people look to vitamin sups because it usually states they only get the right amounts of them if they are fed the suggested amount.

I can only comment on my own experiences, my horses are mainly grass fed as I am in the lucky position of having unlimited amount of grazing all year round.
Many moons ago I just gave dengie and sugar beat and only in the winter then I added a multivitamin and mineral sup just to be sure much like me taking one. Then I added a bit of this and a bit of that and apart from costing a fortune and taking an age to mix up one feed his tea was more powder than food!

That's when I changed to BC and the difference was plain to see (and feel as he was calmer).

I don't have a degree in equine nutrition so am no expert but what I do know is all four of mine look well and apart from one of the old ones having cushings they are fit and healthy so I cant be going too wrong.

They have the appropriate Dengie product - at the moment either Hi-fi lite or alfa a oil
speedi-beat
the appropriate Bluechip - either Pro or Lami-lite
and when their in home grown hay

I have fed 8 different horses and ponies like this and without a doubt all have improved in condition within weeks of being with me to no ill effects or going off their rocker :D and when bloods were taken when we were investigating the old chap to see if he was lacking in anything all his levels were good.
 
I'm just still a bit surprised that we are in the dark ages with feeding when compared with dairy farmers, where forage analysis and bespoke mineral supplementation is now becoming popular. It's all very interesting. Mind you, ultimately there is little monetary profit from horses like there is from cows.

Thanks for your response Bluechip.

Trina x
 
Can't be bothered to read ALL the threads :( but I use Blue Chip everytime. They were by far the most helpful on the phone and all my competition horses are on it, plus my two fatties are on lamilite and its made a miraculous :) difference to them. I do feed Think Pink daily and the horses' coats are fab.:).
 
onemoretime said:
What do people think of Pink Powder - just to throw another balancer into the pot.
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Pink Powder is not technically a balancer, it is a powdered supplement, the reason you cannot call it a balancer is because it does not have the protein levels to be a true balancer. The reason some horses seem to gain condition on Pink Powder is because it also contains a probiotic which allows the horse to utilise his feed more efficiently.
 
I'm so honoured Blue Chip has come to HHO to teach all about their marvellous and complicated products.

With the science I have just read, I am feeling inspired to go out and buy their products immediately
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I was recommended equilibra feed balancer for my youngster and he did so well on it Ive dropped out all hard feed this winter for my other horses and just feed haylage/ alfa or molly chaff , with the feed balancer and drop of oil.

They all look healthy and glossy and sane.
 
I doubt you'll get a response from Blue Chip until after the weekend as I guess they won't be working on a Saturday.

I do think there's a place for balancers but maybe the terminology isn't helping anything as they probably don't 'balance' forage diets as already stated. However having been recently looking into what I feed my horses I contacted ForagePlus re doing an analysis on the grazing at our yard. I'm at livery on roughly 20 acres which includes varied grazing, 2 separate woods, natural hedging and a river full of river weed etc. Due to the size and variation ForagePlus advised any analysis would only be a snapshot of what my horses are eating and could be useful as a ballpark figure but would not be accurate.

In view of the fact using a general purpose supplement or a balancer is also only a guestimation of my horses requirements it would be cheaper and easier for me just to buy such a product.

I guess those in a similar situation to me wanting to provide a full range of vitamins & minerals alongside some protein for muscle development would turn to a 'balancer'.

Maybe the key is not to think of it as balancing anything but just to think of it as a way of providing much of what our horses need, a bit like us taking a multi vitamin supplement.
 
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