feed help- balancers etc

S

scribble

Well-Known Member
Joined
13 September 2008
Messages
893
Location
norfolk
Visit site
following our lesson tonight it has been decided to re introduce hard feed to my mare.she is a 16.2-16.3 tbxwb and is good weight wise. she has been on allen and pages calm and collected or fast fibre with dengie alpha a plus a horselyx but this was stopped when spring grass came thorugh as she went silly. She is now lacking in energy but if i feed a med to high levels of starch she is silly and a lot more spooky on hacks. my instructor said use a balancer and/or stud mix or muesli. what do people feed and do you need to feed a balancer if she is on horselyx or if feeding hard feed at correct dose as i didnt think you did. it needs to be cheap to feed but must WORK as i am about to loose £5k off my wages a year.
 
Spillers have recently brought out a number of feed balancers and they are much cheaper than the rest. I have bought the "light" version (in a pink bag) for one of my TB's who gets a bit whizzy if anything has high starch levels. It was £12 for a 20kg bag because it is £5 off until the end of July - what a bargain!
 
Balancers are designed to 'top up' what they are not receiving from their other rations. On the bag of balancer I have it says you can use it with full rations of hard feed to promote weight gain, or with part rations of hard feed to top up nutrients.
Perhaps your instructor is thinking that too much hard feed might send you mare silly again, so a part ration of 'normal' hard feed and balancer to top up?
If the horselyx is a balancer then you wouldn't need another balancer as well, as long as your mare is using it.
As far as hard feed goes, I would look for something non-heating, with slow release energy to prevent fizziness. I used topline cubes for my youngster over the winter and they said suitable for rest to medium work, they didn't make him fizzy at all :)
 
Balencers are massively expensive if you are using them as a primary food source. Although if you want to control fizzyness / spookiness ditch the horselyx!

How about adding a little power and performance to your cool and condition? We have 3 show jumpers - one with extreme feed related behaviour issues, one "normal" and one who could live on thin air - all on calm and collected with a tiny bit of power and performance in each feed so thier gut is acclimated to it. Then when we need a bit more oomph we just up the power and performance.

As balanced regime it works really well. The same principle should work for any feed make - not just Allen and Page. Can't think of why we didn't think of something similar before!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top