feeding youngstock....

L

lilym

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a friend of mine has a 6 month old native filly, she asked me about her diet.....good grazing, add-lib good hay in stable overnight, some chaff and a snifter of mix topped up with a broad spectrum vit/min supplement, i have assured her this is fine..native youngster in good condition, these ponies are designed to live on meagre grazing, vits/mins being met is the most important thing, plus plenty of fibre......she is a bit peed off at the mo as some showing people at the yard are insisting her pony will not grow properly unless it is packed full of food like a foie gras goose, and too much hay will cause it's belly to drop???? i mean who comes out with this crap??!! these people keep their foals on practically add lib hard food and hardly ever turn out
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asking for problems really....and the foals are crackpots to say the least, now, i have looked at this filly, she looks fine!! nice even growth and her ribs can be felt, which i think is ideal condition for a youngster to be in, so i suppose the question is......would you add lib hard feed to youngstock???????????
 
My little lad get mostly fibre, in the shape of speedibeet and alfa a with just a handful of hard feed, as well as generous proportions of haylage - he seems to be thriving on it - if I needed to increase his feed it would be proportionate, with an increase in fibre too.
 
My young Shagya Arab has been tucking into his mum's feed since he was about 2 months including sugar beet. He now get his own ration. Some one on the breeding forum has posted that foals cannot digest sb until they are 7 months. I cannot find any reference to this in any of my text books on nutrition and stable mgt. He has suffered no ill effects. Does anyone know?

As far as hard feed is concerned - friends of mine fed their 3/4TB foal what was recommended and he developed osteochondrosis. I do know that good forage is important for natives and if you top that up with min/vit supplement your youngster should do very well. Most natives given access to good grazing manage very well without our help!!
 
My 2 1/2 year old gets a mug of balancer and a handful of chaff once a day. He is in good condition, but I think he needs the balancer, so I won't cut this down. I think he will live on fresh air once he's stopped growing!
 
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