Feed balancers

[FantasticFour]

Hi all, I'm new here and was wondering what everyone thinks of the powdered feed balancers? They seem to work out a lot cheaper - by my calculations, less than half the price of the TopSpec Lite I'm currently using. I have four horses to feed so trying to balance good quality nutrition with cost!

Current diet:
- Fat ponies (BCS 4) - 1 mug Fast Fibre (soaked) plus 1 mug HiFi Lite
- Leaner ponies (BCS 2.5-3) - 1 and a half mugs Calm & Condition (soaked) plus 1 mug Alfa-A Oil
both plus TopSpec Lite, supplements, medications etc

Am I right in thinking that because they are fed other fortified feeds, they won't need the full amount of balancer for the day? I was thinking of giving them half of the recommended daily amount. They have 24/7 restricted grazing (strip grazed) and a bit of hay to share in the evenings while I check them. They are all in together so grazing/amount of hay can't be changed for each one unfortunately.

The powdered balancers I've looked at are Benevit Advance and Equimins. The Equimins balancer seems to offer more of each nutrient etc but I'm unsure if they actually need them!

Thanks in advance for your thoughts - this feeding lark is very confusing at times.

 

[Leo Walker]

The only concern would be with anything on restricted grazing and a token feed is the lack of protein, vitamin e etc, etc. My very fat newly purchased pony is on restricted grazing but she gets a balancer, extra vitamin e, a handful of copra and salt every day. She looks well on it and is dropping weight nicely.

If you want to feed a powdered balancer then Equimins is better than benevit, but I'd look at Progressive Earths cheapest one. It works out about £10 a month for a 500kg horse. You could feed that in a token feed with a decent handful of linseed and some salt and achieve the same result for less cost and calories.