Grass nuts

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happyhorse978

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Hi all
Thinking of starting my boys on grass nuts, which will be fed fully soaked as a mash of course. It would be to feed alongside their balancer. Their balancer is currently fed with a chaff but I have to be a little careful as my one horse can gobble chaff up and choke on it. I like to keep their feed as simple as possible.

Basically just wanting to know if people find grass nuts a good 'base feed' for mixing supplements into and of course adding a little extra fibre to their feeds. Both of mine are sensitive sharper types so definitely don't need any extra energy!! It would only be fed in small amounts and wouldn't be needed for weight gain etc. I am looking mostly at the Emerald Green grass nuts. I note they have the normal grass nuts with 10.4% sugar and the meadow magic grass nuts at 8% sugar. This is higher sugar than what i normally feed so I was just wondering do people find they are heating/add excess energy? Everything else about them looks great, I just want to ensure they aren't likely to make them fizzy!! I know every horse reacts differently of course but just want to hear other people's experiences please :)

Thank you for your help 👍☺️
 
As I started reading I was planning to say, be careful grass nuts can have quite a high sugar content. They don't suit my cob and we've stopped feeding them to the sheep after a case of suspected laminitis. We feed Agrobs Wiesencobs instead.
 
All my 3 get soaked grass nuts as a base for various supplements. They are large wb's, I've not had a laminitis problem but I don't have a lot of grass and feed hay year round anyway. I've used emerald green in the past but there isn't a supplier near me so now use graze-on pellets. The supplements are unappetising powder so can just get left at the bottom with a chaff based feed. One of mine has started to choke on chaff as well as he just grabs too much in one mouthful.
 
If you're not needing weight gain I'd probably go for sugarbeet over grass nuts. Do you definitely need to add something extra in? If they're getting hay/ haylage or grass do they need fibre from their feed?
 
I use a 50:50 mix of soaked Emerald Green grass/ alfalfa nuts as my base for apeverything, they are brilliant. The horses eat them really well, they’re brilliant quality and you only need to feed a very small amount of dry weight to give them a decent bulk of feed (in the winter I soak 1 scoop and that feeds 5 horses quite comfortably)
 
Squeak said:
If you're not needing weight gain I'd probably go for sugarbeet over grass nuts. Do you definitely need to add something extra in? If they're getting hay/ haylage or grass do they need fibre from their feed?
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Deffo need to add a little something as they only have a balancer and i cant disguise supplements in the small amount of balancer they have. They do have ad-lib forage and are turned out at grass all night but its more something just to mix the supps into otherwise they would both turn their nose up at it 🤣
 
happyhorse978 said:
Deffo need to add a little something as they only have a balancer and i cant disguise supplements in the small amount of balancer they have. They do have ad-lib forage and are turned out at grass all night but its more something just to mix the supps into otherwise they would both turn their nose up at it 🤣
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Thanks to recs on here I started my mare on Baileys Natural Meadow Cobs so she had something appetising to hide supplements in, that would keep her busy whilst her TB field mates ate their feeds and be low calorie. It’s only 6MJ/kg dry weight and soaks up to a massive bulky feed that she really likes.

In contrast, grass nuts are more like 10-11MJ/kg dry weight, similar to sugar beet. Definitely more conditioning, although not as much as something like copra (15MJ/kg).
 
khalswitz said:
Thanks to recs on here I started my mare on Baileys Natural Meadow Cobs so she had something appetising to hide supplements in, that would keep her busy whilst her TB field mates ate their feeds and be low calorie. It’s only 6MJ/kg dry weight and soaks up to a massive bulky feed that she really likes.

In contrast, grass nuts are more like 10-11MJ/kg dry weight, similar to sugar beet. Definitely more conditioning, although not as much as something like copra (15MJ/kg).
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Thank you!
I'm not too worried about them being conditioning as I wouldn't feed that much of them, I'm more questioning whether the sugar level would be OK as it is a little higher than what i would normally feed. I think it probably would be fine as they would't be recieveing large quantities of it... but just wanted to hear from other people incase they had different experiences! Thank you for your help ☺️
 
Mine get Simple Systems Haycare
All eat it up very well plus everything I put in it, and it's less than 10% sugar and starch combined
 
I feed it throughout winter and switch to fast fibre in the summer. Half a cup of grass nuts soaked swells quite a bit I find so great for supplements and added water intake without feeding too much.
 
Have a look at Rowen & Barbary Fibre Mash if you want to include a mash, it's low sugar/starch and digestible energy. Dex won't eat his supplements without a mash to put them in which is why I feed it. Half a mug full makes quite a good size feed as it soaks up so much water
 
AShetlandBitMeOnce said:
Have a look at Rowen & Barbary Fibre Mash if you want to include a mash, it's low sugar/starch and digestible energy. Dex won't eat his supplements without a mash to put them in which is why I feed it. Half a mug full makes quite a good size feed as it soaks up so much water
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Thank you, I've not used Rowen and Barbary as their mashes are soya based which i tend to stay away from. Thank you for the suggestion though! ☺️
 
GrassChop said:
I feed it throughout winter and switch to fast fibre in the summer. Half a cup of grass nuts soaked swells quite a bit I find so great for supplements and added water intake without feeding too much.
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Thank you, have you ever noticed it causing fizzy behaviour due to the slightly higher sugar content? :)
 
happyhorse978 said:
Thank you, have you ever noticed it causing fizzy behaviour due to the slightly higher sugar content? :)
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No definitely not. My mare is "spicy" anyway and sensitive to high sugar feeds but it doesn't have any impact on her energy levels, she gets quite a lot during winter. I don't mind 10% of natural sugars but wouldn't touch a feed that was 10% sugar due to molasses etc, I think she would explode then!
 
GrassChop said:
No definitely not. My mare is "spicy" anyway and sensitive to high sugar feeds but it doesn't have any impact on her energy levels, she gets quite a lot during winter. I don't mind 10% of natural sugars but wouldn't touch a feed that was 10% sugar due to molasses etc, I think she would explode then!
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I was thinking that, surely natural sugars are different! Thank you, maybe I'll give them a try then! ☺️ 👍
 
happyhorse978 said:
Deffo need to add a little something as they only have a balancer and i cant disguise supplements in the small amount of balancer they have. They do have ad-lib forage and are turned out at grass all night but its more something just to mix the supps into otherwise they would both turn their nose up at it 🤣
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I'm feeding speedibeet, linseed lozenges and mollichaff molasses free twice daily and putting apple juice in the feeds to hide paracetamol & bute.

We're now down from 2 bute and 30 paracetamol to 1.25 bute and 8 paracetamol between two feeds but when he was having 15 paracetamol in each feed the apple juice certainly helped.

Tesco sell no added sugar apple juice.
 
colourville 17 said:
Ive fed soaked thunderbrooks meadow nuts for years as a carrier for supplements. Low sugar n no nasties in it n a bag lasts ages
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There must be something 'nasty' in them. We got some recently when the feed store couldn't get Agrobs. Our sheep absolutely fell on them and are sulking now that we are back to Agrobs, while my cob, whose skin is very reactive to sugars, had a breakout. Obviously I treated that but fortunately we could go back to Agrobs and it cleared up very quickly, which I put down to no more TB.
 
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