Feeding - Why is it so complicated!! Any advice welcome!!

asommerville

asommerville

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I have a 4 year old IDx Arab who is lovely but can be highly strung and think the world is full of monsters. So having been fine all summer he has now come in for the winter and is fed Dodson and Horrel Suregrow (as he was a poor wee soul when i got him and he looks fab on it) and chaff, and a bit of naf magic.

soooo all seemed well until he started getting an upset stomach, i thought it was the magic so had taken him off it, doesn't appear to have made a difference. I have looked at the chaff he is fed and the bag says that it is a 'new improved formula' - wondering if that is what is upsetting him?

i wondered if he has got a food intolerance? Does anyone have any experience of this and any suggestions as to what to feed. I was going to go back to basics with redi grass and his balancer but any advice would be great? I have phoned some of the compnaies but they all tell you different things and to be honest my head is bursting with info about sugar and starch and cooling etc!!
 
All I can say is that my IDx was quite normal until i put him on A + P Calm and condition and then monsters started appearing everywhere .. so now I'm just on a balancer and conditioning fibre , biotin and equs health summer shine / winter glow and he's gone back to Mr laid - back . I don't know much about suregro but it sounds as though he may be getting a few too many k/jls of digestable energy. I would go back to basics with a chaff and balancer and see what you get..
 
Feeding is simple. Fibre + Vits & mins. I have gone back to a powdered vit & min supplement rather than a balancer and the pony is better for it.
 
another vote for A&P fast filbre - doesnt fizz my silly pony up at all - no need to add anything else vitamin wise - has it all in there. you can feed quite a lot of it too which will satifsfy a hungry horse.
Trouble is with feed - it actually isnt complicated - just made to look so by feed companies who want you money and 'feed' off our deisre to give our horses the best we can.....
 
A&P FF is great if your horse is a good doer, it's great as you just feed it on it's own with water.
Problem is I don't think it will be enough for a growing 4th old it's very low in protein, my TB really dropped off on it.
I use baileys lo cal balancer and I find it brilliant! It's not so high profile that it causes tummy probs or behaviour probs but it gives them everything they need, quality protein and my TB looks a picture on it. I feed it with HiFi, fibre nuts and oil. If he needs more I swap the HiFi for Alfa and add s.beet but tbh he wintered all last year on the HiFi, balancer and nuts and came out of winter looking a picture.
My horse is prone to runny poos and he can get bolshy on energising food but on this diet he's fine. If he does get runny poos it's usually down to the grass now and he got terrible squits when I fed him haylage so I feed hay, or a bit of haylage mixed in with hay.
I've fed mixes and oil supplements and rice bran and all sorts of things in the past but I always come back to good old nuts and HiFi! My last horse survived on this diet all his life until 26 with no behaviour probs or anything :).
 
I had massive issue with my young shire and his unsettled guts, very un happy skinny poor horse! I also had the conundrum of needing lots of calories without the bulk for such a huge animal. After lots of trial and error i now feed HIFI, kiwkbeet and feedmark original balancer. The balancer is in a concentrated powder formula and contains pre & pro biotics all the vit and mins and conditioning ingredients. Been a life saver for us, happy healther horse, putting on just enough weight for a growing youngster. Feedmark also do balancer for good doers etc, find them brill. you also have to watch EPSM with heavy horses so i needed a high fibre high fat, low starch low sugar diet. It may sould simple to say fibre is all you need but in modern demestic horses there are other things to think about, and as always every horse is very different! Good luck
 
Feeding should be simple, but sadly as humans we are suckers for the mollassed licks and #Honey chop# chaff - we think all things sweet are nice for the horse! Sadly molasses and sugar and cereals can be a devil for hoof quality, gut health and temperament. Many cubes/nuts have added molasses as binding agents.
Too much protein can make a horse nervy and aggressive.
I feed my WB A & P Cereal and Sugar Intolerant feed with a good cup full of micronized linseed and a broad spectrum vit supplement and carob kibble (locust bean) and plain chaff with maximum 3 carrots and adlib hay/haylage. Many holistic vets and horse folk advocate feeding just chaff and micronized linseed and adding more linseed as required with good quality adlib hay.
 
Trouble4125 said:
I got very confused with all the feeding after we got a pony that'd had a very poor start in life, he has constant runny poo. We feed Baileys economy nuts with a small dollop of mollasses and garlic. That is a base. In the winter we add hi-fi lite and sugar beet if req'd. It brilliant, cheap and very tasty!!
Click to expand...

The garlic could well be causing the runny poo - it is quite aggressive on the gut. My little companion pony gets very loose on haylage and I feed him this to cure his bad guts(actually I feed carob to all of mine so technically I give him bigger chunks of carob not the powder - but this is cheap for you to try!)

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/DIARRHOEA...t=UK_Horse_Wear_Equipment&hash=item35ae1ad721
 
asommerville said:
I have a 4 year old IDx Arab who is lovely but can be highly strung and think the world is full of monsters. So having been fine all summer he has now come in for the winter and is fed Dodson and Horrel Suregrow (as he was a poor wee soul when i got him and he looks fab on it) and chaff, and a bit of naf magic.

soooo all seemed well until he started getting an upset stomach, i thought it was the magic so had taken him off it, doesn't appear to have made a difference. I have looked at the chaff he is fed and the bag says that it is a 'new improved formula' - wondering if that is what is upsetting him?

i wondered if he has got a food intolerance? Does anyone have any experience of this and any suggestions as to what to feed. I was going to go back to basics with redi grass and his balancer but any advice would be great? I have phoned some of the compnaies but they all tell you different things and to be honest my head is bursting with info about sugar and starch and cooling etc!!
Click to expand...

Are you feeding Haylage??
 
hi, no not feeding haylage, am not a fan and both of mine get as much hay as they can eat. Also i tried him on haylage when i got him (to give him more calories) and it just ran through him as well. Its hard to try to figure out what to feed that will give him everything he needs for growing :-(
 
nope - he's actually a wee bit fat for my liking the only problem is the really runny droppings - but so runny that sometime it's only water coming out - sorry for the too much info but it's a shame :-( Dont know if your going down the sstomach ulcer line asking that but in all other ways he is fine so don;t think that is the problem.

i asked the vet and they just said that he has a sensitive tummy!
 
I would go with a feed balancer and chaff, thats what I have my 3yr old on and hes doing great, hes a TBX ID.
 
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asommerville said:
nope - he's actually a wee bit fat for my liking the only problem is the really runny droppings - but so runny that sometime it's only water coming out - sorry for the too much info but it's a shame :-( Dont know if your going down the sstomach ulcer line asking that but in all other ways he is fine so don;t think that is the problem.

i asked the vet and they just said that he has a sensitive tummy!
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If he looks good, then I would say you shouldn't be feeding "extras" and that's possibly what is upsetting his tum. If he's getting some grazing, hay might be all he needs at the moment? VERY few horses that are not working hard (this means the vast majority of average horses kept today, with the exception of racehorses, eventers and endurance horses) actually need supplements, or even hard feed at all.
 
The suregrow will prob have a lot of protein in. I was advised to feed my 2yo this until he hit around 3/4 - good for growing babies. I would as others have said have a look at Allen and Page. I love their feeds. Give them a call, very helpful and explain why, not just recommendations.
 
I moved both my horses onto Allen and Page Fast Fibre about two weeks ago - hey presto - calm temperaments and solid poo! I have even managed to hack my nappy mare round the block with no rearing, spinning, napping or jogging! Both mine are TBs and not good doers, so they both get two really large feeds of this each day and are both still looking fab. I also give them micronised linseed, magox and brewers yeast, as well as ad lib haylage.
 
I have years of experience of food intolerances with horses, dogs and people and even then I managed to come a cropper with my IDx.
I was feeding her a glucosamine supplement, which of course, is very sweet. She became very spooky.
The only way to really tell if your horse has an intolerance is to cut food back to hay only, see if the behaviour and digestive problems disappear (it might take up to 3 weeks) and then gradually introduce individual foodstuffs and monitor any changes.
To be on the safe side, I'd feed a high-fibre diet with no sugar and no cereals and *definitely* no 'light molasses' which several companies seem to think is ok but which isn't! I'd also be very careful with alfalfa as it can have a bad effect on some horse, especially our part Arab/Appaloosa.
 
I have an Anglo Arab and a Dutch Warmblood. The Warmblood came to me in really really poor condition (less than a 1/3 of his bodyweight) and because of his poor condition, my warmblood's stomach is now very sensitive and the only food that kept his stool the right consistency is BALANCE - SHOW MIX, and and my arab, well... she's the most fussiest eater I have ever met and she loves this stuff! It's a complete feed all in one bag - no measuring, mixing, adding, supplementing.... just 2 scoops and done!!

Anyway what I was going to say is give balanced horse feeds a ring and tell them about your horse, they have so many different feeds suitable for every kind of horse out there and are just brill.....

(http://balancedhorsefeeds.co.uk/new/products/specialist-feeds/show-mix/)
 
Feeding need not be a headache

As others have said - horses are browsers and need a high fibre diet.

For a start adlib hay when stabled is great - if a guts buy a small holed haynet which will keep him busy for longer. If the net is not big enough hang two or three.

As a baby yes he does need protein for muscle growth - and vitamins and minerals too. This is why I use a ration balancer for my youngster. Most have protein as well as the vitamins and minerals.

If he needs some extra energy then add some oats - a cupful at a time, allowing several days for them to work.

Forget all the pretty bags of processed feeds. Good hay, grazing and sufficient work will see him right.

For an upset tum - this can happen when a feed make is changed over too rapidly - always take a week to change the product to allow the right bugs to develop in the gut. If the horse has had antibiotics recently then probiotics should help sort this out.
 
thanks for the help folks!! Have started changing his chaff to unmolassed Chaff and pony nuts and pink powder. Something seems to have made a difference and the only thing that i can think that i have cut out totally is his balancer.

Fingers crossed he has a happy tummy now! :o
 
Sounds good, glad you've hopefully found a cause. That said, I really like Suregrow as a balancer but it just may well be too high in protein for your chap. Mine isn't such a good doer and she (11 year old 16.1 ridden mare) has it at 2/3 rations.

I use Graze On or Just Grass as a chaff. Super feed with no flavourings and rather good value for money.

Also recommend Fast Fibre, I use it on its own as a morning feed and it certainly helps to keep her weight on over winter.
 
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