Feed bins then and now...

blitznbobs

blitznbobs

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I've kept horses since I was a child and was thinking today how much feeding has changed

30 years ago we had 3 bins .... chop/ chaff , oats and 'pony nuts' ( god knows what was in 'em!

Now ATM all ours get a token feed of 'safe and sound' with a balancer that's it...

Have your feeding habits changed and what feed / supplements do you have in your feed bins and how did you choose?
 
i have "Cool Mix" and Chaff... She gets Restore in winter.. I chose because she needed weight on and people said Cool Mix was good for putting weight on their horses also had more nutritional value than the bog standard pony nuts.. chaff is self explainable and Restore because she had a low immune system last year so that built it up..
 
When I moved to my yard it had a full barn of oats for the race horses so my little old pony lived like a racehorse for a year (bought as a 15yo turned out to be about 30!) he was great :) when that all ran out and got spoiled I fed cool n cooked.

After that I had a tb so had to know more about feeding and fed mixes and sugarbeet.

Now I have fatties and I'm back to my token feed of cool mix and when I say token I mean each one literally gets one handfull. It's full of flavour so they think they're getting a real treat ha. When it runs out though I'm getting just some balancer cubes and chaff.
 
Our feed room had a barley boiler for whole barley, a tub of bran, whole oats and cod liver oil for oldies and molasses. I only have a good doer now, so it varies between chaff, fast fibre, sugar beet and a general spplement.
 
Fast fibre, nuts and micronized linseed!

When i started out it was just molli chaff, nuts and sugar beet when it got really cold.

My mare is a fussy madam so its a case of what she will eat that's going to actually keep weight on her but we seem to have got the right balance now :)
 
Mine still gets mainly pony nuts (well livery nuts now) and chop - she's not a fan fancy modern slop, she like her feed crunchy, including lumps of freshly nibbled cob if he dares to look at her while she eating.
 
My current two are nice and simple: Healthy Hooves and Fast Fibre. My old mare, on the other hand, had a real mix: Healthy Tummy, Fast Fibre and H&P balancer, plus two different ulcer/colic supplements and some chopped carrots for good measure. She insisted on warm water come winter as well.
 
When I had my first pony which was about 40 years ago he got bran - which we used to get in huge hessian sacks - and pony nuts. Over the intervening years I have fed just about everything from flaked maize, rolled oats, barley rings, linseed which I would boil myself, different chops/chaff, boiled barley, various mixed, various cubes, sugar beet and heaven only knows what else.

Now I tend to feed a good balancer, Alfa or unmollassed chop, Staypower Cubes and Speedi beet in the cold months to my five horses depending on what work they are in.
 
Dylan used to get - Speedi-beet, Alfa-A, conditioning mix, garlic and biotin.

Jazz gets Readymash Extra, NAF ProFeet and Sarc-Ex. Takes up much less space!
 
When I was a teen our feed shed had the following: oats, bran, molichop, chopped straw, sugarbeet, pony nuts, garlic granules, vegetable oil, and salt.

My girl is fat at the moment so she gets a handful of chaff and some salt. Feeding oats is jaw dropping these days! Although our horses worked a lot harder back then.
 
Lo cal chaff and oats in the summer, unmollassed sugar beet and oats in the winter, plus linseed all year round and various minerals.
 
mine get a handful of chaff, made using our own hay put through a chaff cutter , and a handful of cheapo pony nuts they dont need anything else and its just a reward for coming down the paddock to the stables in a morning. if they loose weight over winter [ hope so they are fatties at the moment] and need extra feed then I add a mug of micronized linseed.
 
We have four bins at the moment. One is filled with Halley's Timothy Chop, one is filled with Speedibeet, one is filled with High Fibre cubes and one has the micronised linseed and copra. The two big horses get a scoop of soaked speedibeet, a handful of chop, a small cup of either linseed or copra, and a sprinkle of fibre cubes. The fat pony gets half a scoop of soaked speedibeet and a sprinkle of chop. They all get minerals added to this that balance out the oddities of our grazing, mainly copper/zinc, but also magnesium and sodium.
 
touchstone said:
Our feed room had a barley boiler for whole barley, a tub of bran, whole oats and cod liver oil for oldies and molasses. I only have a good doer now, so it varies between chaff, fast fibre, sugar beet and a general spplement.
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Ours too . . . smelled wonderful - especially when they made hot bran mashes for the horses when they came back from either pointing or hunting :).

I try and keep Pops' feed simple . . . an unmolassed chaff (molasses blows his tiny wee brain), D&H ERS Pellets (designed for horses prone to tying up with no cereals/starch/sugar), linseed and in the winter either some Copra or some Speedibeet (made with hot water so served warm).

Oh, and lots and lots of good quality hay and haylage.

P
 
eggs said:
When I had my first pony which was about 40 years ago he got bran - which we used to get in huge hessian sacks - and pony nuts. Over the intervening years I have fed just about everything from flaked maize, rolled oats, barley rings, linseed which I would boil myself, different chops/chaff, boiled barley, various mixed, various cubes, sugar beet and heaven only knows what else..
Click to expand...

I'm the same, have fed loads of different things but have now returned to something simple.

On my yard it used to be a choice of molassed chaff, pony nuts, molassed sugar beet and barley. Plus a scoop of limestone flour supplement for calcium if the horse had barley.

Now I feed grass chaff and a small amount of generic own brand pony nuts from the local shop. Plus supplements of a vitamin/mineral powder for all and herbs for the one with COPD.
 
When i first had a horse on loan (good doer 14.3hh cob) it was pasture mix and mollichop, with veg oil and garlic and sugarbeet added in winter , as this is what i was told to feed by her owner.

When i got my TB, he was on barley, oats, sugarbeet and alfa a, with garlic and veg oil as this is what i was advised to feed, he always dropped a lot of weight in winter no matter how much extra feed i gave him, mostly because he was a bit neurotic and was always on edge, he weaved and boxwalked his weight off as i didnt realise the sugar was sending him totally loopy.

then i read up on digestion, different feed types and actually researched myself instead of going off what other people told me to do.

He is now on speedibeet and micronised linseed, with a combination multivit and probio supplement, and coconut oil. I add grass nuts in winter if i feel he needs a bit extra.

He has always been on adlib haylage and this hasnt changed.

He keeps his weight on much better with the feed i now have him on, hes also much calmer and is no longer classed as loopy (this was also helped by my magic muscularskeletal therapist who has been treating his cranial pressure! but a change of feed showed improved behavior before the treatment) he does much better on fiber based feed with low sugar, he also shows a reaction with alfa-a. Wish id have thought to do the research beforehand!
 
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