Following the Bran "rant" does anybody feed straight feeds anymore?

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scarymare

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I've just seen a long term forecast for Scotland which does not make for pleasant reading. So I'm thinking, 7 horses, 2 in foal, six months snow = loads of money. They did great on ad-lib haylage last year BUT this year's weather has been dreadful so quality will not be great. So wondering whether to look at feeding rolled/crushed (blimey can't remember which) barley and sugar beet as its way cheaper than the D & H pasture/conditioning mix I usually feed. When I was growing up this seemed to be OK but interested in anybody else's views.
 
Half the forum seem to. Including me. I think the consensus is that it's cheaper, but I've never really done the maths myself / compared how much of each I would need to feed etc.
 
Thanks, I noticed in my feed shop it was £7.65 for a bag and I'm paying 12.95 for D & H mix so with 7 in a harsh winter that would be significant I think.
 
Well i feed grass nuts if that counts. My mare was fed so much food last winter and looked like a greyhound coming out of winter. She had that much haylege, feed you name it. So put her on grass nuts earlier in yr when grazing poor and the weight piled on. so she now on a small amount of soaked grass nuts and will increase when weather gets worse. I also feed a vit/min supplement with it and micronised linseed meal.

Mine has to have low starch diet so last yr i tried the following (not all at once and gave them time to work) ....spillers slow release cubes, copra meal, sugar beet, fast fibre, spillers conditioning fibre, soya flakes - didnt work. - grass nuts work for her! she sane on it and looks very well and shiny
 
scarymare said:
Thanks, I noticed in my feed shop it was £7.65 for a bag and I'm paying 12.95 for D & H mix so with 7 in a harsh winter that would be significant I think.
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Assuming you would give the same amount of barley as you would mix. I have a feeling you could give less barley for the same results and therefore the saving would be even more noticable, but this may vary from horse to horse and I wouldn't care to stake my reputation on it!
 
scarymare said:
I've just seen a long term forecast for Scotland which does not make for pleasant reading. So I'm thinking, 7 horses, 2 in foal, six months snow = loads of money. They did great on ad-lib haylage last year BUT this year's weather has been dreadful so quality will not be great. So wondering whether to look at feeding rolled/crushed (blimey can't remember which) barley and sugar beet as its way cheaper than the D & H pasture/conditioning mix I usually feed. When I was growing up this seemed to be OK but interested in anybody else's views.
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I feed oats and sugar beet in the winter, much cheaper than mixes. In the past I have tried fancy new mixes and cubes only to be disappointed with the results and returned to the basics as they just seem to work for my animals.

Years ago, before there was such a thing as 'conditioning cubes', whenever we had something that needed to put condition on, we fed yearling cubes. In recent years when I had a bad doer I fed him stud cubes as they are cheaper than conditioning cubes and I strongly suspect they are they same stuff but in different bags!
 
I always go for the basics. Horse is currently just on Hi fi chaff. Will be on sugarbeet and soaked oats come winter.
I am a bit dubious as to what actually goes into these mixes and nuts having had a horse that went mad on anything but was fine on oats...
Prefer to know exactily what I am feeing them!
 
I feed straights. mine are currently at grass and just get a token handful of oats when i catch them up in a morning and bring them in the check them over and so on. later in the winter they will be having soaked sugarbeet and rolled oats with homemade chaff. I have a victorian chaff cutter and just put some hay through it to chop it up to add to the feed to bulk it out and stop them gobbling it. if they begin to loose weight I will add some boiled barley and boiled linseed too. maybe even a little bran.
 
I've just come back from a riding holiday in Germany and they dont feed mixes etc. The RS i went to had 90 horses - all warmblood types-and three times a day, a large wheelbarrow of oats was pushed round and each horse had a scoop of dry oats. hay three times a day too and they all looked & behaved very well :)
 
I'm moving onto straights this year. Just going to feed readigrass, micronized linseed and sugarbeat. Hoping it will keep weight on better
 
The standard foc feed on our yard is barley & sugarbeet and it's what the big pony gets and looks well on (it sends the little pony loopy and makes him crib more). if he needs some extra fat on him he gets oil added but thats pretty much it all year round plus hay/grass as required :)
 
Chaff, oats, and supplements....though the supps run a pretty hefty bill! :(

OP, I'm sure you meant "six months of snow" tongue in cheek - but if your Almanac is really looking for six months of the white stuff, I'm going back to Massachusetts! LOL
 
I'm loving this thread as we have a small holding and spend a fortune on goat mix, sheep nuts, pig nuts, rabbit mic and horse mix and thought is would be far easier and cheaper to feed everyone straights just need to work out who needs what!
 
Due to a feeling of poverty, I have taken advice from a local Chaser trainer whose horses are the best conditioned I have ever seen, and I am giving up on all the bags of mix and I will be feeding oats and sugar beet this winter. When I was a groom (when dinasaurs roamed the earth) all horses were fed on oats and beet - I had forgotten (it was so long ago).
 
Oats might turn some horses stupid, but there was an interesting article on one of theD & H feeding information sheets that showed just why oats are the best feed for a horse in work. Can't remember the details at all, but it is obviously why they were fed from ancient times.

Of course, there is always the Soaked Oat diet!.......................................
 
I'm feeding oats and sugarbeet to mine now. Barley gave some too much energy and in winter the last thing I want is an over fresh horse from feed!
Thinking back the riding school horses where I went as a kid fed one scoop oats and 1/2 bran to all the horses and half that to the ponies twice a day, they looked well and none were flighty so its really a case of turning back the clock for me and the amount of money thats saved is crazy..
 
I'm very interested to try this myself, I hate feeding sugar/starch to much though so the ponies get Allen and page L mix and the ones in work get alfa a, speedibeet, and Charnwood milling linseed.
What goodness has oats got?
Isn't strights high starch?
 
I feed straights - mainly crushed barley, half the price of processed feed. To that I add Sugarbeet, fresh ground Linseed and my only concession to processed feeds a vitamin & mineral balancer.

I will not feed processed feeds because of the SOY and other unnecessary ingredients in them.

I believe that SOY is possibly the cause of the increasing number of horses with Insulin resistance as it affects the function of the Pancreas.
 
I feed grass nuts which I soak over night, with a multi vitamin supplement. Have only started feeding the grass nuts as he is on very resteicted grazing due to his field companions been too porky!!
 
I feed mine straights (although they are getting nothing but grass right now!). It's cheaper, and mind do really well on it. One of the main reasons I do is to avoid all the rubbish you get in mixes. I feed speedibeet, soaked rolled oats and alfalfa - in fact thats the most processed thing I buy as I get unmollassed alfalfa from Dengie. My ex racer TB has soaked oats and they definitely are not heating.
 
I may be remembering incorrectly, but, I'm sure, back in my youth, I was told that oats are the perfect diet as they are a third protein, third carbohydrate and third fat. However, amendments would have to be made as horses don't live in the perfect horse world.
Ponies, and horses not doing much work, had grass, hay and pony nuts, if their workload increased then oats were added. Poor doers had boiled barley with added linseed to increase the fat content. In the winter, well soaked sugarbeet may be added to keep them warm!
The first 'mix' I can remember was Main Ring and it sent my NF pony off her head, like giving a child blue smarties! I've been wary of mixes ever since.
Rather than feed loads of bits and bobs, I'm a fan of lo cal balancer, always use cooked linseed for coat condition and feed A&P fast fibre and Fibergy to supplement hay/grass. Should Markie ever go into 'hard' work (unlikely, he's 19 and I'm arthritic) and he needed 'food' for the extra energy, then oats would be the way to go for me.
 
Evelyn said:
I believe that SOY is possibly the cause of the increasing number of horses with Insulin resistance as it affects the function of the Pancreas.
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How? Do you have evidence for that, or is it just something you believe? I'm genuinely curious, if dubious.
 
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