How do you feed a balancer?

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canteron

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Do you need to feed with a chaff based product as well? What is the concept behind a balancer?

Specifically looking at Spillers Ulcer balancer for my horses who are now on (plenty of) grass 24/7x
 
canteron said:
Do you need to feed with a chaff based product as well? What is the concept behind a balancer?

Specifically looking at Spillers Ulcer balancer for my horses who are now on (plenty of) grass 24/7x
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You don't need to, but you can if you want to.

I believe the concept behind a balancer is to provide all the essential vitamins and minerals altogether in one feed. However in many cases the amount that needs to be given in order to provide the daily amounts of vitamins and minerals is overly large and impractical for some equines that may for example need to be on minimal hard feed. Also the balancer may have various additions that are undesirable eg soya, molasses. Some people prefer to use a supplement for vitamins and minerals added to a small amount of a feed of their choice (eg speedibeet or plain chaff).

I'm not familiar with the Spillers Ulcer balancer so can't comment on that :)
 
I feed mine with speedi beet, but have fed it ‘neat’ in the past when I was calorie counting.
My pony absolutely will not eat vit & min powder like forage plus but will eat a balancer so it’s a good way to ensure she gets the nutrients she needs.
An independent nutritionist I used rated the Spillers balancers. I use the Daily Balancer.
 
I always feed my powdered balancer with chaff and a cup of nuts dampened or soaked. I have more than one supplement to feed. I imagine pelleted balancers are easier to feed alone but would depend how palatable they were and how fussy the horse is.
 
You can feed them alone if its a pellet type I feed half pellet half powder so I add chaff and unmolassed sugar beet, I only do this as mine are barefoot but they won't eat the powder balancer without the pellet one because it has molasses in it but I don't want to feed the full dose as molasses is not great for the feet.
 
1 of mine gets spillers daily, as is.
1 of mine gets Spillers Ulca, 1/2 volume, along with a scoop of Ease and Excel and a scoop of topline and shine.
 
You can feed balancers straight but most will say add chaff to bulk it out slightly. It’s not as imperative as they make it sound though unless horse isn’t getting enough fibre from hay and grass.

For a good doer feeding it straight is probably the best option, for a poor doer feeding chaff as extra fibre is never a bad shout.

If you have other supplements to add sugar beet (or speedi beet if you want lo cal/a time saver) is a good bet rather than chaff and what I used to use :)

Adding stuff is entirely dependent on your horse and your situation, it’s perfectly fine to be fed straight.


As a side note I had mine on Bailey’s Local when she was in work and it’s made me an advocate for balancers from whatever brand. She never looked or felt better.
 
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I feed a pelleted balancer with a handful of chaff & some miconised linseed. I was feeding a mix but not in the volume required for my mare to get proper amount of vits & mins so was supplementing that & also extra biotin. The balancer I now use has all vits & mins plus biotin in just a mug am & pm so I think it's saving me a few quid plus the mare lives it x
 
Mine have their pelleted balancer with speedibeet and linseed in the winter. In the summer they just get it with the tiniest amount of speedibeet.
 
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