Feeding a foal

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Dot2dot

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Hi guys looking for some advice on a diet for a foal. I havent got her yet as she is only 5 months old and still with breeder although she was weaned at 4 and a half months under vets advice as she is a big foal and was taking too much from mum. She is an ID X Appaloosa to make approx 17hh give or take a couple of inches.

She is currently on milk pellets and will be until she is 6 months old. I have used both spillers grow n win and feedmarks benevit advance on young horses before and had good results from both. Which ever I used I would mix it with some speedi beat and good quality chaff (dengie hi fi probably). Split between two feeds a day.

Could I have some opinions on this? Also she will be fed haylage.

Thanks
 
Mine are 6 months and 8 months and they get
ad lib haylage
two mugs of balancer ( I now use surelimb) a day
with two small scoops of alfa a with oil (split over two feeds)

they also have a horslyx in the field

I am going to get some benevit advance as my mare always looked fab on it!

How tall is your foal? - I have a height obsession :-)
 
I only had mine briefly on milk pellets to get them eating solids - both mine where orphaned

Also I am not quoting this and I'd advise you get your own opinion from a trusted person but I didnt keep mine on milk pellets because I was told they are fatty and I really only used them as a tool to encorage eating, once they did eat I got them on balancer and alfa a
 
sorry I keep replying -
mabel is 13.1hh and is 6 months on the 21st
marmy is 13.2/3 and will be 9 months 12th fab
I just want them to be 15hh plus! 16hh would be fab I just like to check I dont have dwarfs
 
My colt is 8 months old and he gets D & H Suregrow and ad lib haylage and grass when he's out. He is 14.1 at the moment so I'm not sure how big he will make. He is definately all legs!
 
carmenlucy123 said:
Sorry slave2magic how much suregrow do you feed?
Also can your horse stop growing I'm worried mine are small now!
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I feed about 3/4 of a kg per day split between 2 feeds. As to wether they can stop growing, I think it would depend on the breeding. One that is likely to end up tall will grow more noticeably than one with smaller genes. I think they all grow at different rates and yours may have a growth spurt as they get older.
 
Both my babies have a cup of D&H suregrow and a scoop of graze on twice daily up until they are three. I add speedibeet in winter and oil if they are looking like they need to put on a few kg
 
Well that's exactly what I thought but when people come out with big lectures and long words I always feel like I'm the stupid one. I have always fed past foals chaff but doubted myself after that.
 
Toast said:
Well thats a load of rubbish, chaff is mainly chopped hay/alfalfa which is highly fibrous and exactly what theyre designed to digest!
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No, a foal is not designed to chew such fibrous stuff at that young age. If you read any authorative books on the skeleton and developement of foals you will see that a foal's dentition is not fully formed until it is much older so it's not able to masticate as an older horse can do. It is also only built to have milk in the first few months similar to a child. Feeding chaff of any kind especially alfalfa which is very stalky can sometimes leads to lots of lumps of unchewed food being swallowed which can lead to impaction which can be fatal especially to a young foal not strong enough to fight it particularly when it's system has not grown sufficiently.
It seems the height of foolishness to knowingly take a risk with your foal if it can be avoided simply by having a little patience with what you feed it until it's old enough to have a fully developed digestion and dentition system.
 
All true Maesfen but a little will not do them any harm if they pick at it and as long as they drink enough will stimulate their guts, small, baby foals trying to eat too much hay I have had problems with and had to pull reams out of the wrong end(one foal) but they are hard wired to experiment with stuff so will pick at whatever Mum has or eat nothing if they are awkward beggars. When I brought my week old orphan home the vet said to encourage her to start picking at wisps of hay and anything else she liked to eat, she did have by the time she was a few months old some of that dried grass stuff and alfa chop as a partial hay replacer but often with some of her milk poured over and always wet with water. By the time she was six months she certainly had a small haynet of her own and finished it. They do get hay bellies9 and you have to watch they are not too big as then you are quite right there would likely be a problem0 because they don't chew and digest effectively but that doesn't mean they should point blank not have it and not learn. Lots and lots is wrong but they eat grass and if they were wild and lets face it most horses could be they would not eat mostly nice green soft grass they would eat stalky dry standing hay type grass especially in the winter. If the mums do the foals copy but yes they have milk for longer than domestic horses often do so generally get enough fluid to wash it through and to feed them. All things in balance and moderation is all and slowly slowly add things. Do beware of too much alfalfa with foals though as it is quite high protein and can unbalance growth quite seriously.
 
Yes, everything in moderation and my orphans at a fortnight old were pulling at bits of nice meadow hay, sucking it and spitting it out mostly as they experimented with it! They always had a small amount of hay in their box for them to nibble at but they were far more interested in their Equilac and Suregrow which let's face it, were doing them a lot more good. I would rather they had their proper rations of those than be too full of unproperly digested hay and this is the same principle if you used a chaff (forgetting for the moment that they are not fully formed to be able to masticate and digest it properly (why you had to pull it out of yours, lucky you were there) Foals can be funny feeders and don't like to be over faced so surely better that they get the nourishment they need without any extra bulk which might over face them rather than turn them off and have to find something else to tempt them.
Still it's good to have different viewpoints and most foals have survived regardless of what we do to them, luckily, but being fore warned is fore armed so they say so a few more people knowing what can happen won't be a bad thing; they can make up their own minds now whether it's worth that risk.
 
That particular foal was only a few days old, the hay probably stretched from her mouth to her tail end daft creature but she was always precocious in that regard if that is the right word. She was born only a couple of hours when I gave the mare her breakfast and she was right into the bowl, front feet stuck in taking mouthfuls(no chaff btw). She has survived.
There are limits to the amount of creep and other pellets that it is good for greedy foals to have though and at that point I think something hard to eat but well soaked can be useful but not necessarily nutritious. If they are outside they eat all sorts of daft things while experimenting, it stops their guts collapsing they tell me......
 
It is probably the hardest thing I have ever done and it is hard when all the advice contradicts itself!
I am constantly questioning myself this is the first foal I bred and I have ended up with an orphan no mare ( who I loved dearly and was the only reason I bred for sentimental ones) and picked up another orphan on the way!

The thing is to suck it all up and decide for yourself! I started on pellets and added balancer with it then slowly sprinkled bit off alpha a on - I did always stand guard at feed time and watch because the bigger foal would eat hers then steal Mabels! I was also worried for Mabel choking! Do everything slowly and move to the next stage when you think you r foal is ready I only left them to eat alone probably from 4 months old when I was happy Mabel was eating quick enough and not messing if I couldn't watch I asked the yard owner to stand outside while she ate - Marmalade the bigger foal could eat from the minute she turned up at 3 months old - and she ate quick! I never worried about her!
 
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