Feed for extra energy without stroppiness!?

arwenplusone

arwenplusone

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A tough one. My mare is lazy/lacking energy and I'd like to 'fizz her up a bit' without making her bronco/rearo horse (she's good at this)

She is a 5 yr old KWPN mare (lightweight build) and a VERY good doer. She is in light/med work (1 hr a day with some competing at weekends). Currently she gets a scoop (small shovel type) of oats, a scoop of lo-cal and 2 scoops of Alfa A oil. Once a day. She is correct weight and condition.

I am trying to overcome her laziness in other ways (training/varying routine/hunting etc) but just wondered if there was a feed that might help?

I could chuck more oats in but I don't want extra energy to manifest itself as bad behaviour
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What do you think?
 
Mine was very stroppy on Alfa-A (high protein I presume caused this) - terribly opinionated.

So I cut it out and he now gets pony nuts and tiger oats. Easier for me to increase and decrease the level of oats accoridng to work, he has enough energy, and best of all he is no longer opinionated!

Tiger Oats are whole oats with a mineral pellet balancer so you don't need to feed a supplement with them as you may do with rolled oats etc.
 
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Mine was very stroppy on Alfa-A

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Very interesting - T is rather stroppy, which is not his essential charachter. Wonder if it could be the Alfa......?
 
Spotted cat - ooo - now I hadn't thought that it might be the alpha. She is worse when I add sugarbeet so that could make a bit of sense. I'm interested in the tiger oats though - who makes them?
 
I have taken Donkey off oats and Tiger oats and she is now on Race horse mix, speedibeet, outshine and alphaa with oil - I have seen a slight increase in her energy - they complained that she was too fizzy when she went away for week - I'm still looking for the button they pushed
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they complained that she was too fizzy when she went away for week - I'm still looking for the button they pushed

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I think it's called 'electric *rse@
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I read about giving naked oats as and when for extra energy, I haven't tried it but it was something I am considering. What is the difference between naked oats and tiger oats.
 
Have you tried her on high energy grass nuts? Simple Systems recomend them for racers and 3 day horses, they are supposed to provide the same energy as a competition mix. They should be a slower release energy source, so no sillyness?
Have you spoken to any feed companies for ideas?
 

Thanks guys for your thoughts!
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I need to go to a proper grain store to be honest and have a good look. I haven't spoken to any feed company people (was trying to rely on the nutrition module of my Equine Science degree! lol
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) but that might be the way to go.

I'm quite interested in simple systems but know little about it tbh, what I feed now is pretty simple and I really try not to overcomplicate things- I'm thinking it may be protein that casuses her to be silly so could swap out the Alpha A to nuts or a fibre solution.

Thanks again!
 
I have my mare on saracen enduro 100 with spillers conditioning fibre and she looks and acts really well on it. You could also try one of the spillers response mixes - the instant energy one is really good but I have only ever fed it at half rate purely only because I can only feed my mare once a day but she seemed fine with that amount
 
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