"Feeding high energy feeds does NOT make a horse fizzy!" ...Discussion

flaked maize - always worked a treat on my old nag for extra fizz - above and beyond oats - but then those days I was much braver than I am now and mine was on 12lbs of oats a day
 
When I was looking after scurry ponies we had teo (father and son) that would go loopy on barley! Difficult to handle, bouncing around in the shafts, un-turnable & un-controllable in the ring (the driver is v. experienced and has had Hackneys & 4 in-hand teams in the past). They only had feeds at shows and as soon as I cut the barley out they had enough energy without being over the top. Not sure what it is in barley that did it but there was definately a change when we took the barley out of the equation!
 
"If you ate 10 Mars Bars it does not mean that you can suddenly run 100 miles,"

But conversly, if you want to be able to run 100 miles, do you deffo need to eat 10,000 calories or you simply wont have enough energy to do it.
 
I have to say I agree to an extent. My old pony was a nutcase, totally hyper - and she would be like that whether she was no on feed, nuts or mix.

I couldn't keep weight on her so I decided to put her on oats - now I'll have been about 16 years old at this point, had the pony for 2 years and was still pretty novice in practice with horses though I'd read and read and read...

Everyone thought I was stupid putting a scatty horse on oats but I explained she already wastes a certain amount of energy going mad out riding. If I put her on oats - therefore putting more in to her system, she will still be as scatty, not more scatty, BUT will be using a smaller proportion of energy when being scatty from the total energy available, as there would then be more energy going in than out - result should be weight gain. Previously she was burning more energy than went in and was losing weight. It worked.

Now Asti on the other hand, although she's the foal off that loony pony, is totally the other way, you have to keep weight off her and she's very sane. When she was eventing with one of the kids we tried to "fizz her up" and she was on haylage, and a feed with oats, instant response coarse mix, and sugar beet - and it did nothing at all! She is impossible to feed "fizziness" to.

Knowing what I do now about food intolerances in humans etc. I think the pony may have had a sugar intolerance, and as it was sugar beet then, not unmollassed speedi beet, and molassed Mollichop not the unmollased diet brands you can get, I think its the intolerance that causes side effects much as it does in humans, so horses that are sugar or cereal intolerant aren't fizzed up by the feed energy contents, its the reaction to the "ingredient" they are intolerant to.
 
Ok

If you feed a child a packet of skitttles they will run round like a loony for a while

Feed them 2 packets and their off the planet for the day

there for what you eat does affect your own human fizzines.

Fizziness does not equate to fitness which is what you need to run marathons etc.
 
Agree with MFH_09 too. I was always taught to mix individual feeds rather than go for a mix as you know exactly how much of each goes into the feed. I feed Alfa-A, Bailey's Topline (just a handful), carrots, apples, sugar beet in the winter, eggs, garlic and, due to another post today, am going to try black sunflower seeds! I would not like to give a mix as you can't vary the amount of each thing to suit your needs.
 
I only go by what I have experiants and I find if i feed high protein stuff to a pony it is sharper, yet if I feed a low protein feed stuff it is deffinetly quieter. I also find stabling a pony makes it sharper. enough low protein feed will fatten your pony up too because thats how I fatten mine up with lots of roughage...
If I get tired I eat a mars bar and have a cola and it pecks me up abit because of the sugar.
Barley is worse than oats to heat a pony up...

I also find a fat pony is a quieter content pony, where as a thin (not too thin that its weak) is sharper..
These are only my findings, and I'm a nobody..
 
I think it would be useful to qualify what you actually mean by 'fizzy'. Do you mean that the horse has to much 'energy' (in the loosest term) and therefore needs to expend it by arsing about or do you mean that the horses digestive system has been made uncomfortable as a result of overloading it with energy giving feeds which it finds hard to digest.
 
This makes really interesting reading! I can feed my mare anything, well anything that she will eat, the only time she gets'fizzy' is when she is fit and not having enough work. With her its got more to do with boredom than feed. If I need a bit of fizz I just give her glucose, Im pretty sure its metabolised quickly the same as it is in people because it does have a 'fizzy' effect. But you then have to compensate and make sure that if she has fizzed alot her salt/minerals are balanced again. So its probably not a good idea to do on a regular basis.
 
all i know is that when I fed my old horse with a bucket of oats (yes seriously) we couldn't understand why we had to scrape him off the ceiling.
 
When I was feeding multiple horses for riding school / livery yard, we fed straights so we could control how much and what feed exactly each horse got. Barley was fantastic for weight gain, no other feed had such a pronounced effect on weight gain. Horses in moderate to hard work got oats, IMO it definitly gave them energy and I came across very few that had adverse reactions to them.

That said, I think feeding is part art, part science - you can calculate calories in v calories out (and actual digestible energy) for weight gain, but there is no doubt in my mind some feeds exhibit themselves in different ways. Sugar beet sent a few 'fruit loopy' - far more so than oats ever did - I put this down to being the sugar element, in the same way fizzy pop, candy floss and sweets can send a child hyper, and why adults consume things like lucozade to give them energy rushes. It left their system pretty quickly, anything beyond that was behavioural (e.g. sugar beet = excess energy which causes horse to buck etc, learns that bucking stops work, becomes behavioral) I certainly feel 'picked up' if I have something sugary mid afternoon.

On another note, I was amazed that some people used to give their horse oats the morning of a fun ride / hunting etc to 'give them energy' when the horse had never been fed oats before - the horse won't be able to digest them properly, so quite how they thought that would help I am not sure.
 
I disagree.
many years ago when training at a yard Spillers used it as their test yard for new feeds. (nut mixes) It had a lot of different horses there from riding school to eventers.
Every three weeks they arrived, removed all the left over feed and replaced it and we had to monitor horses' behaviour.
I can't tell you how many times we cursed them after they added barley or oats to their nut mix. We got bucked off, bolted with, the school ponies (some shetlands ) went mental, and eventually they started to use more grass in their pony nut mix.
As part of a controlled trial it was proved that certain foods made the horses hyper, and eventually the event horses owners refused to continue taking part.Where this theoryhas come from I don't know, I can see the sense in soaked oats for instance, oats have never been as bad as barley or maize in my eyes, but feeding high energy without getting fizz just won't wash.
perhaps we could do some trials with the "Experts" doing the riding after they prescribe the feeds?
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I dont buy the 'oats make my horse mental' thing. I can see that feeding a load of sugar may give them a bit of a sugar rush but cereals? I'm not so sure!

Moon isnt an especially calm type but she copes great on conditioning cubes, alfalfa, sugar beet and micronized barley in large quantities, no way has it made her 'fizzy'
 
god,maybe baileys top-line is making my mare NUTZ??meant to be cooling but she defo got too much fizz at mo. wat mag supp do u add pls???
 
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