Feeding straights

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Overgrown Pony

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Hey guys

Going to try my 17.3hh 8yr old DWB gelding on straights this winter. This is to try and be as economical as possible and also because none of the various conditioning feeds I tried last winter worked.

I'm looking to go with Speedi-Beet soaked over night with whole oats and full fat soya meal.

He will be out 24/7 well rugged with adlib good quality hay.

Question is will he need a vit & min supplement?

After looking into it, it appears they get all the vits & mins they need from good quality hay.

He'll be worked around 4-5 times a week weather permitting (ice permitting if I'm going by last year!)
 
Cracked or rolled oats might give you better value as whole oats tend to go straight through and are wasted. Best judge of whether a feed is doing the job is your eye and how your horse responds. If the hay is good, most horses need very little in the way of hard feed, but as always this depends on many other factors.
 
This is exactly what we feed the ones at work (stud) but rolled oats and we add limestone (no idea why, just get told what to do!) and red cell. They all seem to look well on it but you do have to feed big quantities to keep the weight on them (theyre warmbloods) sooo not sure itll be cost effective unless yours is a good doer.
 
I switched to straights last year and saved a fortune compared to compound feeds! I tend to use kwikbeet or purabeet and bran as a base then add oats as needed. Beet is high in calcium and low in phosphorus and bran is the reverse so they balance each other out pretty well. i also add a custom mineral mix which is balanced to our hay (we are low in copper and zinc, high in iron and manganese which is fairly average for the UK).

The feeds tend to look big and bulky but a mug of bran is only 100g and 100g of beet fluffs up to 1 litre when soaked so gram for gram it works out very economical.

ETA: I also add micronised linseed in the winter which gives a lovely shine to their coats :)
 
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Thanks for your replies guys :)

My reason for whole oats as oppose to processed is because they have a longer shelf life and I've read that by soaking them over night the husks are softened and so made just as palatable.
 
I'm interested in trying the soaking whole oats overnight thing - apparently it makes them less starchy? I think whole oats are supposed to be better for horses because all the fibre of the hull is intact, so they're less immediately 'heating'.
I won't be feeding a vit & min supplement, horses evolved to process all their dietary requirements from grasses and herbs etc, it doesn't make sense to me that man made mineral premixes are any better for them, or even bio-available to any great extent.
I think when you're feeding large amounts of oats it's usually recommended to add some limestone flour to balance out the calcium-phosphorous levels, but if you're feeding speedi-beet that's high in calcium so should be enough to balance it out anyway.

I wouldn't feed soya, it's high in pro-inflammatory omega 6 and highly likely GM and sprayed with everything if that sort of thing is likely to bother you! Full fat ground linseed has a better omega 3 to 6 ratio.
 
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Brownmares ration sounds almost perfect to me, with maybe less or no bran and more oats for weight gain (oats are also high in phospherous so balance the SB nicely) that is exactly what I would feed too if I needed condition, but I have a chubby cob who is only allowed a handful of chaff and minerals or he blows up like a balloon!
 
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