How do you feed a horse for energy but reduce spookiness and anxiety?

[Haka]

Hi all, I'm hoping to get some usefull tips here.
My horse is tbxwb and is 10 years old now. He needs feeding for energy and weight gain but tends to go spooky on it. We mainly concentrate on dressage and he tends to tense up in the arena. I know part of it is me tensing up so I have asked my instructor to take him in a test for me to see how he gets on.
I feed competiton mix, alfa a oil, sugarbeet and linseed. I was considering giving him magic calmer with it but I don't want to loose any energy or spark.
Any suggestions or if anyone has been in the same position, what helped them?

 

[Red-1]

I don't find that competition mix useful, obedient energy mostly comes from obedience to the leg, and comp mix tends to have molasses which is like E numbers for kids. Sugars and starchy mixes seem to produce spikey energy, I believe it is digested all at once higher up in the digestive tract, rather then a slow burn from fibre digesting further down.

I would use mainly fibre, if the horse needs to gain weight I would add Equijewel which is made with rice bran oil so gentle on the stomach but has them gain weight.

If the horse does not eat enough I use NAF Thrive, which seems to make them calm with a side effect of eating like a horse!

 

[JennBags]

Agree with Red-1 above. Weight gain comes from forage, plenty of good quality hay or haylage, and often a competition mix will seen them a little haywire. If he needs more energy, is he fit enough?

 

[DabDab]

Definitely ditch the competition mix - these aren't generally that helpful as they have a large sugar content that provides neither useful energy nor calmness.

If she's a developing horse you need protein for development and fibre/oils for energy. Fibre base can come from chaff, speedibeet, grass nuts, hay cobs etc. Oils from things like linseed, rice bran, soya copra or literally adding oil, and with protein you'll often find that a lot of the high oil straight feeds also contain a good amount of protein.

So, for example I used to feed all mine speedibeet and linseed (linseed to give the oil and protein), and then because speedibeet wasn't so readily available and because I fancied trying it I switched to 'pink mash' for them all, which is a combined feed that is fibre base with all the sexy stuff added. There are quite a few mashes and pelleted feeds like that available now, so it's worth looking around at what's available.

 

[be positive]

Hi all, I'm hoping to get some usefull tips here.
My horse is tbxwb and is 10 years old now. He needs feeding for energy and weight gain but tends to go spooky on it. We mainly concentrate on dressage and he tends to tense up in the arena. I know part of it is me tensing up so I have asked my instructor to take him in a test for me to see how he gets on.
I feed competiton mix, alfa a oil, sugarbeet and linseed. I was considering giving him magic calmer with it but I don't want to loose any energy or spark.
Any suggestions or if anyone has been in the same position, what helped them?

A few years ago I had an event horse come in on livery, he was on a similar diet to your horse and when I tried to take him off the comp mix he refused to eat so I kept him on it as he was rather poor and he did the first season looking less than ideal in his condition and was always a bit tense, following a few odd incidents and a minor colic I thought he may have ulcers so got tough, changed his diet and had him scoped, he was clear but did have a few areas that probably had healed.

I think the mix, which he loved, was totally unsuitable for him and fortunately found something he would eat this time, the change in him was incredible, his condition improved, he had more energy but he was far more relaxed and he ate up better than he ever had, I regretted not trying harder when he first arrived but when a horse looks poor, it is mid winter and they refuse to eat it is far easier to give in and give them what they are used to.

I would look at changing yours to a low sugar/ starch diet and forget the calmer.

 

[Shay]

As others have said I'd ditch both the comp mix but also the Alfa A. We had an incredibly reactive SJ competition pony who needed feeding for condition but would become very difficult on high sugar feeds. We opted for Allen & Page which is barley and molasses free. Ours could cope with Power & performance - but you could opt for something like calm & condition or cool & collected. Although that particular comp pony was fine with Alfa A I have had others reactive on it so just as a matter of principle I would swap that to a molassess free non alfa chaff. Loads and loads of really good quality forage - and if you can 3 smaller feeds rather than 2 bigger ones.

 

[Haka]

Agree with Red-1 above. Weight gain comes from forage, plenty of good quality hay or haylage, and often a competition mix will seen them a little haywire. If he needs more energy, is he fit enough?

Hiya, he is extremely fit but can be lazy. I was feeding him on blue-chip original, alfa a oil, unmolassed sugar wet and linseed. He has plenty of forage as we have very good grazing and has access to hay 24/7.
I started feeding comp mix and he is much better energy wise just gets spooky. He is neversily though.

 

[milliepops]

I think the problem with feeding for "energy" is that the logical side effect is the horse has more mental and physical capacity to be reactive to things (i.e. spook or be anxious)
Any high starch or sugar feed is likely to have the same effect.
For some horses that's quite useful - my welsh needs to be verging on the ridiculous side of hot to be able to do her work now, which is really quite hard for her as she is competing PSG and training somewhere around inter1/2. So I feed her high starch on her hard working days to help her to be hot enough for the work, this is combined by endless training about sensitivity to my aids as well, and we have found a good balance. But many people would find her a bit unmanageable, she gets very strong, quite spooky, has a bit of attitude - i need her to be like that otherwise she tires too quickly.

On her non working days she eats what my prelim/novice horse eats, which is grass nuts and balancer. The WB is bone idle but if I fed her the same way as the welsh, that sparkle would be verging on dangerous because she is not trained yet. Instead she just has to do a lot of work on being on the aids, and developing her fitness, that way I can channel her energy into doing what I want, instead of being spooky or lazy.

So I would stick with the diet based on fibre, after all that is what the horse evolved to use for energy, and use your training to transform his reactivity. Give him plenty to do so he doesn't have time to be anxious, and you will probably find he doesn't waste all his energy on spooking.

 

[DabDab]

Can't really say it any better than MP. I think most of us at some point have been tempted to reach for another feed to try to make a horse more biddable in one way or another, but most of us know deep down that it's predominantly training that will gradually produce the horse we want.

 

[Summit]

Another for A&P feeds with no barley and molasses. I called them as I wanted my horse to have a bit more energy and no fizz and they suggested small amounts of Power and Performance

 

[Shay]

You've gone from a standard balancer to competition mix and wonder that he's spooky and reactive? You don't say which comp mix and they are not all equal. But in principle you've just done the equivalent of feeding a toddler a blue slush puppy drink and are wondering why it all went haywire! (parent specific reference there..).

Whilst he might need the higher energy mix which one have you chosen and why?