Feeding barefoot horse

Sol

Sol

Well-Known Member
Joined
30 May 2009
Messages
4,133
Location
Shropshire, England.
Visit site
Still umming and ahhing over this (mostly as skint at sec so cant just get on with it!). Want confirmation that my plan will not kill my horse?! :p

I've got my wonderful barefoot book and have been having a read of that, plus online etc and have had some good advice... but mostly vague or pointing me towards having my hay/grass tested.

- Put simply, I can't afford the hay/grass testing. Not right now anyway (ie, before xmas) as there are too many other costs.

- I do however want to do whats best for my boy, and keep him without shoes! :) He's not sore without but not 100% on stones (shortened stride) etc.

- Other reason for diet change is that I've not felt he's been doing well on his current feed, TopSpec Comp Balancer & Hi-Fi Original. His coat is greasy & dull & his hooves could be a little stronger I think, although overall he's fit, good weight & energetic.

Ok, so, to the point!! :rolleyes:


I'm looking to buy the main recommended supplements, linseed, brewers yeast, seaweed & magnesium in bulk, plus unmolassesed sugarbeet just as a 'carrier' for this really (don't plan to feed a lot as he doesn't really need a 'feed' just the supplements hence balancer). Ok.
- My main question is, can I just start by feeding the recommended amounts of these, and see how it goes? Playing around with the levels if they don't seem right? I don't want to do anything that will upset things too much, hence being cautious! I know it isn't ideal, and in the long run will look at getting forage tested & having a feed plan done, but for now?


:D Last question... somewhere I read that a person had got hold of a normal salt lick, and one with a higher amount of copper in it, so their horse could pick & choose (and they were looking into another sort? honestly cant remember where I read this!) and today saw some of these salt/copper licks. Worth a shot? There was a salt lick in his new stable which he seems to have killed now, so presume he was using it. He's also been a bit odd about licking bricks recently so I presume is lacking in something!?

Any help appreciated, still can't get my head around this :o
 
Sounds good! I personally would drop the seaweed as although it contains alot of important trace minerals, it also contains alot of iodine. You are much more likely to OD on iodine than you are to add a useful amount of these other minerals and that would cause more problems than it would solve. The rest was just what we started ours on (until we also saved enough to go the forage testing and feed plan - so worth it when you have the £!).

I would start with less of the new powders than you intend to feed, and slowly build them up as you can guage their reaction, and your horse won't suddenly turn his nose up at his new health food!

If you drop me a pm I'll find my old scoops and work out exactly what ours were getting if you like - I could bore for england on this subject!

The copper salt lick (do you mean the red rockies?) doesn't contain much copper at all so I would (and did!) just go for the red one tbh.
 
if you are getting your dietary recommendations from feet first and are in the UK you might want to rethink the seaweed (as I believe the authors have).

majority of UK is short of zinc copper and magnesium and you will struggle to compensate with seaweed.

if you are not forage testing which is now the authors preferred route you may be better off replacing the seaweed with a good quality general vit/min supplement. although this route can be trial and error it is what many of us are faced with.

no one supplement will suit all horses in all locations and you may have to try 2 or 3 to get the one that works for your horse in your circumstances.

I always advise introducing new feedstuffs slowly, you need to give the bacteria in the hind gut time to adapt. if you feed too much magnesium oxide for your horse it may get sloppy droppings, so you should increase the amount of this slowly.

Free choice minerals is a popular theory among some, but completely unpopular with others. I tend to go with the latter based on the Dr Kellon recommendations and observation and results. Horses like people can get a 'taste' for things which means they will eat too much one thing and not enough of another. Sometimes fatally so.

Don't change too much at once. And find yourself a 'test track' so you can monitor results

Good luck
 
Thanks both of you! Two lots of similar advice which is always good!! :D

Will drop the seaweed then, any recommendations for a good vit/min supplement?

Will definitely add new things slowly, planning to order before I run out of feed so it can be a nice steady change over and just a trickle of new stuff at first :)

Also, do you know any good suppliers of Magnesium oxide? I'm planning to buy the others from Charnwood Milling but they don't appear to sell it, sadly!

Thanks again :D
 
Try Natural Horse Supplies for MagOx (google will bring up the website). It made my youngster very loose, even at small doses, so ive had to take her off it.

Ive stopped seaweed too. Mine get Top Spec Lite, Kwikbeet, Brewers, with a red rockie in the field.
 
or could use calmag - calcined magnesite - £9 for a 25kg sack from agricultural merchants!!! - its more grainy and its not as pure so feed slightly more - i feed two blue 25ml scoops a day to mine. Lasts forever and way cheaper than magox

Also http://www.megazorb.co.uk/shop/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=2_21&products_id=45 - its charnwoods linseed but actually cheaper than charnwood sell it themselves!!!?????

brewers yeast - i get mine from ebay shop as worked out cheaper again than charnwoods - plus they sell in huge bags and i only feed 40g a day. dont mind linseed in big bags as use 200g of that a day but 20kg of brewers yeast seemed excessive
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Brewers-Y...t=UK_Horse_Wear_Equipment&hash=item3a68c61740 = this should last me 6 months!
 
Last edited:
Sol said:
I've got my wonderful barefoot book and have been having a read of that, plus online etc and have had some good advice... but mostly vague or pointing me towards having my hay/grass tested.

- Put simply, I can't afford the hay/grass testing. Not right now anyway (ie, before xmas) as there are too many other costs.

- I do however want to do whats best for my boy, and keep him without shoes! :) He's not sore without but not 100% on stones (shortened stride) etc.

- Other reason for diet change is that I've not felt he's been doing well on his current feed, TopSpec Comp Balancer & Hi-Fi Original. His coat is greasy & dull & his hooves could be a little stronger I think, although overall he's fit, good weight & energetic.
Click to expand...

I'm having similar ideas:
My boy has never had shoes is 9yrs old now and up to this summer coped everywhere fine. He has always been on Topspec Comprehensive Balancer, and a small amount of either Alfa A or Hi-fi and has always been fed Mag Oxide at about 10g per day. Haylage in winter and grass in summer. Then these 3 things happend within a couple of weeks of each other that have made me re think diet.

1. He was really low on energy (we do BS and BD), spoke to Topspec and they suggested feeding a little topspec turbo, which I started to do and his energy picked up. then:

2: He started to go footy on stones and got a slight stretch on his white line on both front feet.

3: He then got a large swelling in his groin which seemed to be a reaction to an insect bite, was on bute and antibiotics but also blood tests that showed slight anemia, vet prescribed blood tonic. He was now off the turbo feed as not in any work. But once the bute was finished and he was still walking in hand he was lame in hand on my gravel drive and of course the stone track. A week later after field rest he was then sound again.

He is now back in work and we had to use hoof boots for a couple of weeks to get over the stony tracks. I tried a couple of days on a tiny amount of topsec Turbo and he started to go footy again.

So I am now questioning the whole of his diet as every summer he looses energy and tends to pick up viruses and the only difference is he is out on grass 24/7 and no haylage, so I am about to get my grass analysed and see how it differs from my haylage and will probably get a feed plan done for both my horses.
 
Wow. Others feed all sorts! :o

Mine is out all summer on "normal" grass (he may stayout all winter too this year, depends) and was in over the winter at night with as much haylage as he tummy could stuff in. Breakfast and dinner he got a handful of herbal chaff, a flurry of limestone flour and a shake of biotin. That's it!!

3.5yr old Thoroughbred whose feet were frightening when I got him out of racing. Farrier (fantastic man at his job) says he's got fab litle feet for a Thoroughbred. We do a normal amount of roadwork and if he's not been hacked out in a while he does have a short stride over pebbles but apart from that we have no trouble with his tootsies.

Persevereance and patience is the key - it took 8 or 9 months (and he wasn't even being ridden then, he'd been turned away!) from taking his shoes off to get past the soreness and hobbling and I-can't-possibly-function-without-shoes-on stage. Worth it though - he's got lovely feet that get seen every six to eight weeks for £20 (Yorkshire!) and hacking with another barefoot buddy means you can actually have a conversation out riding without the whole vicinity hearing you're raised voice oevr the shoes!! :D
 
Sol said:
Thank you everyone :)

ESH your lad does sound similar in some ways to mine actually, I hope you find something that works for him soon! :)
Click to expand...

Sol: He is a 17.2 IDxTB and at the moment, I have been feeding quite a bit of hay, in the field as the grass is very short in the paddock they are in, and my haylage doesn't arrive till next month. I still have him on the Topspec balancer, have just switched to Unmollased Alfa A, doubled the magnesium, feeding some Yea sacc (instead of brewers yeast) and just started to include a little linseed and he is now out walking out over the stones, just picking his way through them sometimes and I show jumped him today and he had energy, even enough for a little bucking fit when he hit a pole. It brought a big smile to face.

I have just received my grass testing bags so will get that done and sent at the start of next week, I know my haylage analysis so when my plan is done I will let you know the changes required. I'm happy to ditch the Topspec balancer if needed as I think all the other recommended stuff will work out a cheaper option.
 
Pod77 said:
Try Natural Horse Supplies for MagOx (google will bring up the website). It made my youngster very loose, even at small doses, so ive had to take her off it.

Ive stopped seaweed too. Mine get Top Spec Lite, Kwikbeet, Brewers, with a red rockie in the field.
Click to expand...

ETA: I meant to say Top Spec TOP CHOP lite; the chaff, not the balancer!!
 
I had a particular interest in barefoot horses a year ago (I have my horses barefoot)
Personally, I kind of forgot about the mineral, copper, vitamins,... I confuse about it now (memory very short:D)

But what you have to care very much is the laminitis content in the commercial food. I, personally, don't recommend food other than hay and grasses.Yes, I know what I 'm talking about. Chemical horse food are full of sugar, so, risk of laminitis. It's not a jock.;)
 
My horses are barefoot, due to one having problems, I was advised to change what I was feeding. So I've changed over to thunderbrooks pure essentials base mix (google it) it seems pricey(but if you compare how much all the individual supplements cost) but a little goes a long way and my horses look fabulous on it and their feet are strong and rock crunching. Best thing I've ever fed them and they absolutely wolf it down :)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top