Feeding advice for cob mare with 3 week old foal at foot

[Caroline 3232]

My lovely 5 year old cob/ID mare had a large foal 3 weeks ago. I didn't realise she was pregnant when I purchased her so it was a shock for us both! She did very well on limited grazing, hay with lite hi-fi and baileys low cal balancer once a day, until 3 weeks before she gave birth!

I need some idiots advice for feeding her.

Currently she's on very poor grazing. They're stabled at night. She's eating vast quantities of hay.

Alf A (1 large scoop) twice daily with baileys no3 stud cubes and Hobson and Horrel mare concentrate - amounts weighed and split equally between the required volume for her weight each day.

This was on the advice of a friend who has bred several mares.

It doesn't seem to be suiting her. She's very hungry and irritable.

Any advice on a filling diet which will provide her with all the nutrition she needs to feed her massive and thriving baby would be greatly appreciated, thanks ?

 

[PurBee]

Maybe the introduction of the alfa-a, which i assume to be alfalfa, is causing irritability.

some horses and ponies just dont adjust to it well..

It’s a great high protein legume forage, average @28% protein, but some proteins in it are digested in the foregut and some in the hindgut, unlike the proteins in grass based hay which are mostly foregut digested. So the gut microbes needed for hindgut digestion wont be present at first, and can cause ‘belly ache’ type symptoms and irritability. This more likely to happen if alfalfa is introduced suddenly. If you did introduce it suddenly, cut it back to 250g, then 5 days later 400g, etc.
If irritability returns then stop the alfalfa and replace with other high protein mare concentrate.

She’s consuming high hay due to wanting loads of nutrition to make milk. Protein in natural mixed grass meadow hay around 5% -but in sown mixed hay of fescue, timothy, diploid ryegrass the protein levels are 8-10%. So if you can source a tested high protein hay you’ll find she’ll get much more from that.

Hopefully others will post what brands out there are high protein without alfalfa, as im no expert on the mixes in many bagged foods as there’s load on the market now.

My mare was on plentiful grass 17hrs, nighttime hay and 2kg stud cubes from Gain, and she and the foal did well...she was on that for 8 wks before foaling, and he was born quite muscly, and continued to grow really well on her milk! i was lucky to have plenty of grass. Can you get some grass pellets (not hay pellets) for her, until spring grass comes through better? Theyre normally very palatable and easy on the gut.

Good luck with them both...please post a foal pic so we can all coo over him/her! Foal pics means winter is definitely through and cheers us all up! ?