Just how badly are we feeding our horses?

I have to say i changed to simle system last years as it was all stuff horses would eat, and it made a huge difference to my horses eating habits and their temperments.
I did change bcak to commercial feeds as i kept forgetting to order the stuff.
I think i agree with most of what he is saying (i did skim over as did not have time to read it all) there are many conditions now adays that in someways we know are food related and others that are still in the reaseach stage.
So it is a topic i will give a good look at even though i have already decided to go back to simple systems because of the huge difference it made to the horses
 
since mine had ulcers I did a complete overhall of their diets, they should not have apples, carrots, molasses, high starch foods, cereals, sugar beet, garllic as all these foods can aggravate the stomach lining,
They currently get fed Winergy Equilibrium and alpha beet. Its amazing whats in feeds. I used to swear by A&P stuff C&C until I realised it had molasses in it.
 
OP which thread?

I have spoken to Simple Systems on two occasions now and been unconvinced by the advice I have received and therefore I have chosen not to use their products.

ETS my horse has been allergy screened and feeding is now tricky to say the least!
 
my mares currently doing great on grass lol but i have always wondered why horse feeds have such random things in them
 
I had Jane van de something come to the yard from simple systems and she was extremely knowledgable, also as i huge range of horses to feed she showed me the 4 different bags i needed and i have to say i have never seen mine look better.
Before i could have anything upto 9 differenent bags of feed open at any given time.
I will be going back on them at the end of the month and will stay on it this time
 
if mine need any feed its hifi light and allen and page calm and condition if they need any hard feed. only the TB had that during the winter and he is now on just grass and hay. the others are on nothing apart from one of the mares on a small handfull of hifi light and 5ml ofrugmate and thats it.
If i don't have to feed them i won't as its better for them to be as natural as possible.

Also my other mareis allergic to apples, they give her colic.

xxx
 
I have to say I don't like that article.

Here's an example of why-:

If you continue to feed your horse commercial feed having read what ingredients are regarded as acceptable then you probably don't care very much about horses anyway or else you wouldn't be happy to continue donating to*the profits of these companies unnecessarily.'

The above is an extract from the article. Anyone who needs to write so aggressively to demonstrate their point immediately looses my trust. They contradict themselves several times by slating grains and pulses but then recommending oats, a starchy feed.

I personally don't like alfalfa, I think it contains unnaturally high levels of protein, but that doesn't mean I don't think it has it's place.

This author assumes that we are all monkeys who blindly follow marketing blurb. Well I'm not falling for the SS marketing blurb which is littered through the article. If I wanted to feed Alfa, grass nuts and linseed I think I could get it cheaper elsewhere!
 
The author of that article lost me for good when they started claiming cement and chicken manure is in feed. What a load of rubbish. They may have started from a good point, that horses should go through a natural cycle of weight gain and loss (this is what the research from Liverpool and other places is suggesting at the minute with regard to why we are creating laminitis issues/EMS/IR horses), but then went off on a complete flight of fancy, and are still pushing the reader to buy one brand - simple system. It is flawed marketing playing on real fears that owners have about what they are putting into their horses and I don't like companies that go down that route.
 
I haven't used a mix for years and years.. last time was under huge pressure from yo .. and I will never succombe to that ever again..

I just feed a chop, (top chop lite as has no additives) micronised linseed and beet (the quick soak stuff)... plus herbs / vits and minerals as required..

NB none of the feed is SS..
 
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Wow - My favourite subject :D
We or some people are feeding their horses badly but sadly they don't realise it or refuse to accept it. The advertising surounding all the comercial foods brainwash people into believing that if they feed this feed their horse will turn into a n Olympic level horse overnight.

Commercial feeds are - any feed sold in a bag with a manufacturers name on it. Anything that contains a mixture of different food stuffs, whether it be a simple pony cube to a special high class performance horse mix.

We have more metabolic disease than ever known before - laminitis in epidemic proportions - to horses especially and ponies that would normally never suffer from it. Horses with Insulin resistance, Cushings by the dozen, head flickers, so many that they now have gear manufactured especially for them.

Why are we seeing these problems? - we rarely ever used to. What has changed? The only thing is Commercially prepared feeds. We are seeing it now in NZ and we've only had the highly prepared foods for about 20 years or so. When I first arrived in NZ they had Horse & Pony cubes that was it.

Having worked in the equine industry for 40+ years both in UK and in NZ and been exposed to hundreds of horses and ponies from all disciplines and all age groups. From TB yearlings being prepared fro the races, to elderly riding school horses and ponnies. In the yards where the horses were fed a traditional diet - including my own riding school of 32 horses and ponies there were no problems - no head shakers, no lamanitic horses or ponies, none with insulin related problems.

In instances where there have been problems all the horses and ponies had been on commercially prepared foods.
Horse 1 Had been at Pony CLub Camp when I first met it - a lovely genuine teenagers horse, rider as happy as can be. I rode the horse and loved it, honest as. A few months later the rider contacted me - the horse now unmanageable, head shy, eratic and on commercially prepared feeds - the early sort. Horse came to me to live, put back onto traditional feeds and within days was back to its old self.

Horse 2 was at a big stud/training centre in UK - a horse with a really itchy skin condition. It was being fed an early premixed feed - the vet told the owner - one of the working students to stop feeding the commercial mix and put the horse back on a traditional feed. Within days the horse improved and after a week or two the skin problem had gone.

Pony 3 An elderly pony come to retire at the riding school from the showing scene in NZ - aged 18, had a history of laminitis so was cared for accordingly, went down with what was believed to be laminitis in mid winter. Vet took bloods and came back with the diagnosis of Pituitary adenoma now known as Cushings this was 19years ago.

Pony 4 Ditto another pony who started retaining her coat and showing slight lameness. Another Cushings, another that had been on commercial feeds for several years.

Horse 5 A young horse that came out of racing with a head flick, trainer fed soley prepared feeds, stopped within weeks after being put on a traditional diet.

Horse 6 became a head flicker at aged 8 - owner had put horse on commercial feeds. Sadly sold on before I could convince her to put the horse back on to traditional feeds.

One of the main ingredients that I believe is causing the problems is SOY - the miracle food! is now being found to be the cause of many metabolic problems in humans - is there any reason why it could not be the cause of the problems we are finding in horses now.

Google SOY negatives and read what comes up - makes really interesting reading
http://www.healingdaily.com/detoxification-diet/soy.htm
http://thyroid.about.com/cs/soyinfo/a/soy.htm

And finally - why are so many people feeding their horses/ponies hard feed anyway. Because the feed manufactures have brainwashed them into believing that they MUST feed their horse/pony.

Going back to the 60's when I first leant to ride - we didn't feed our ponies and later horses unless stabled or possibly in winter if hay wasn't enough. My New Forest used to be ridden all day at the weekends - off grass and was fit and healthy - she lived well into her 20's.
We didn't smother them in rugs either. Only if traced clipped and living out did they get rugs. We didn't strip graze - our ponies ran out on a big paddock where they regularly exercised themselves. The only horses that got fed soaked hay were the ones with lung problems.

Horses and ponies have not changed over the thousands of years they have been in existance - but what has happened is that we have begun to ignore what our ancestors had discovered and proven that horses work very well fed on grass, oats, barley, hay and more recently sugarbeet. Which we fed to everything - ponies and all the sort with mollases on it. No other was available.

My thoughts are if your horse is having metabolic or behavioural problems - stop feeding commercially prepared foods - even if it says it is for a horse with the particular problem - stop hard feed altogether or feed traditional feeds and work acordingly. Allow th ehorse access to a large area preferably in a herd situation - nothing like peer pressure to go for a hoon around the paddock.
 
A great article -
Not sure about the cement & chicken manure but there was a time when animal protein was added to commercial feeds.

A quicky - I feed my cat dry food - not by choice but by the fact he won't eat anything else - it contains stuff that no normal cat would eat if fed in normal condition such as grains and vegetables. A few months ago I filled his bowl with his favourite food - from a new bag. He sniffed it and walked away. I kept an eye on him thinking he might be unwell but no he's fine but he won't eat the food. The bag had printed on it 'great new look same great taste' so I thought OK he doesn't like the shape. Went and bought him some more - same manufacturer but a different type of food. Yep that's fine scoffed the lot. Other bowl still untouched. Contacted the manufacturers who asked me to send a sample and the codes from the bottom of the packet. Letter came back with a voucher - the sample was missing the final ingredient that made it palatable to the cat. Tells you everything - the food is not palatable unless coated with another ingredient.
 
At the end of the day people should learn to read the ingredients list, learn what it means and make their own minds up. It also depends on the horse.

I have NO idea why people feed ponies and natives. They don't need it!

However if I was just to feed my tb horse grass, hay and oats over winter he would not be looking of feeling very good. There's no nutrients in winter grass, the quality of hay is variable and he would be skinny, stressy and horrible on oats alone, not to mention deficient in calcium.

I don't need an article or the back of a bag to tell me what to feed my horse. I will read the ingredients, compare with other feeds look at the % of starch, fibre, sugar in comparison to the digestible energy and make my own mind up. If it doesn't work I change.

:)
 
Well, feed is a subject im always bringing up at the yard i work at. Personally, at the moment, i wouldnt be giving feeds to any of ours. They are all out 24/7, including the TB's and are either on grass or ad-lib hay. They all look well, some of them overweight.

I feed my TB a mug of spillers original balancer, a mug of spillers cool mix and mollichop with water if he is looking a bit poor. He does get a carrot or apple every now and then. Most of ours are connies who lived on the mountains in ireland, i feel when they come over we mollicoddle them and make things worse, they are used to just munching on grass, maybe having some grains and thats it.
Even our cobs get feeds and they live off air!
So yeah i do think alot of people are bad feeders...
 
I have fed Simple System feeds for about 15 years, and my horses are all sane, fit and healthy. I used to use mixes, but one of my horses was a lunatic on mix so I looked elsewhere. My ex racer is on haylage in winter with lucinuts, unmollassed beet, linseed and brewers yeast. he looks phenomenal on it. I have use Simple System feeds on many different types of horses all with great success and never had a horse that did not improve on it
 
Because I'm a real old dinasaur I tend to 'feed simple'. It's what I was brought up to, and none of our horses had half the problems horses seem to have today. Good quality of whatever you buy is the answer, I think, and stick as close to Nature as you can.
 
I am also guilty of nearly killing my horse by falling for feed company bull sh**.

He just has grass, hay and a mineral lick. I have to detox his liver every month though as it was nearly ruined!
 
Rose Folly said:
Because I'm a real old dinasaur I tend to 'feed simple'. It's what I was brought up to, and none of our horses had half the problems horses seem to have today. Good quality of whatever you buy is the answer, I think, and stick as close to Nature as you can.
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Yep.
 
Evelyn said:
A quicky - I feed my cat dry food - not by choice but by the fact he won't eat anything else - it contains stuff that no normal cat would eat if fed in normal condition such as grains and vegetables. A few months ago I filled his bowl with his favourite food - from a new bag. He sniffed it and walked away. I kept an eye on him thinking he might be unwell but no he's fine but he won't eat the food. The bag had printed on it 'great new look same great taste' so I thought OK he doesn't like the shape. Went and bought him some more - same manufacturer but a different type of food. Yep that's fine scoffed the lot. Other bowl still untouched. Contacted the manufacturers who asked me to send a sample and the codes from the bottom of the packet. Letter came back with a voucher - the sample was missing the final ingredient that made it palatable to the cat. Tells you everything - the food is not palatable unless coated with another ingredient.
Click to expand...

... that ingredient may be what is called 'animal digest', i.e. the content of slaughtered animals' stomachs. It's not as horrible as it sounds - carnivores get a lot of nutrients from the digested contents of its prey's stomachs, some of which they can't get by themselves.
 
marmalade76 said:
After reading the oats thread, I googled feeding soaked oats to horses and found this:-

http://www.naturalhealingsolutions.co.uk/main/page_treatments_horse_nutrition.html

What exactly IS in commercial horse feeds?

Should we all be feeding straights and/or something li*e Simple Systems or is this article complete tosh?

Discuss.
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No the article isnt COMPLETE tosh,it contains a dollop of fact to disguise the tosh,a bit like Molasses really. For example Shock horror ,poultry manure in feeds. What he fails to mention is that at one time DPM (dried poultry manure) was added to the feed of RUMINANTS as a non protein Nitrogen source . BUT NOT TO HORSE FEED> And as for adding cement,well basicly cement is pure crushed limestone which has been heated. The whole website is cranky ,and to be honest I suspect that simple systems feeds are cashing in on localy produced crops which are then marketed as the best thing since sliced bread. They are not cheap and personaly I would feed straights ,or compounds from a reputable feed mill.
 
firewell said:
At the end of the day people should learn to read the ingredients list, learn what it means and make their own minds up. It also depends on the horse.

I have NO idea why people feed ponies and natives. They don't need it!

However if I was just to feed my tb horse grass, hay and oats over winter he would not be looking of feeling very good. There's no nutrients in winter grass, the quality of hay is variable and he would be skinny, stressy and horrible on oats alone, not to mention deficient in calcium.

I don't need an article or the back of a bag to tell me what to feed my horse. I will read the ingredients, compare with other feeds look at the % of starch, fibre, sugar in comparison to the digestible energy and make my own mind up. If it doesn't work I change.

:)
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Hi - Rather than oats if you feed your TB crushed BArley, meadow chaff, sugarbeet and linseed you should find he will do really well on it.

The majority of the riding horses here in NZ are TB's off the track - I had at least 10 in my school at anyone time and even in winter they were fed only when worked and when out in the paddock fed Lucerne Hay, Meadow hay and grass. They had one Canvas NZ rug with a wool lining and during heavy snow weather of which we would get a good amount each winter they were fed additional hay. They all did exceedingly well. I wintered the hacks seperately to the ponies purely so that they could have the lucerne hay. When you have 32 horses & ponies you can't bring everyone in twice a day to hard feed them. So finding a diet that keeps weight on is imperetive.
 
Evelyn, you are so right! I banged on about this some years ago when coming back into horses and being astounded at the number of lami cases (and the number of horses affected - it used to only ever be fat ponies that got it) and behavioural issues. The only reason I could think of was the new 'super' feed that today's horses are fed on. We feed a forage only diet to the ponies if they need extra feed through the worst of winter and if the horses need a bit extra in winter then they are fed measured straights 'as in the old days'. The only concession to this is that we now use equibeet rather than the ordinary sugar beet. Our ponies are also fed hay by weight through winter although the horses have ad lib haylage. I have one homebred pony that has had sweet itch all his life, following the harsh winter in 2010 and him losing more weight that I would have liked, because we couldn't feed 14 in the field together, he has never rubbed nor worn a rug since. He previously had to wear a rug all year round because he rubbed himself raw every chance he got. I am convinced it is because his metabolism was somehow corrected by the weight loss I wouldn't normally have allowed. This winter we deliberately allowed them all to get leaner than we would normally, they were far from being neglected but were not kept up to weight. All are now looking healthy and well up to weight on grass alone.
 
Feed companies have a lot to answer for!
Firstly they reccommend you feed vast amount of hard feed a day, for all horses no matter how fat or in how much work.
Secondly, do you remember a few years ago a feed company was going around saying that ''If your horse looks healthy and feels well it still needs a supplement'' or something like that. If your horse looks well, has a nice coat, plenty of energy and is happy in himself just on grass, then it doesn't need anything else... because (shock horror) horses ARE meant to eat grass!!!

The yard I used to help when I was little the person who used to make the feeds up had worked with horses since the 1940's. He used straight barley,oats, sugar beet, chaff, and used to make linseed jelly (its fun to make!). The horse's were pointers, hunters, breeding stock, show jumpers and show horses. All of them looked well.

p.s My pointer is out in the field 24/7 at the moment eating nothing but grass and is looking fine!
 
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It never ceases to amaze me that horse owners are happy to feed woody lignified "hay" and then spend a fortune on hard feed. I have found that feeding good digestible hay and plenty of it ,topping up with hard feed only if necessary has always worked for me.
 
dominobrown said:
Feed companies have a lot to answer for!
Firstly they reccommend you feed vast amount of hard feed a day, for all horses no matter how fat or in how much work.

The yard I used to help when I was little the person how used to make the feeds up had worked with horses since the 1940's. He used straight barley,oats, sugar beet, chaff, and used to make linseed jelly (its fun to make!). The horse's were pointers, hunters, breeding stock, show jumpers and show horses. All of them looked well.

p.s My pointer is out in the field 24/7 at the moment eating nothing but grass and is looking fine!
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One of the things I do in feeding lessons at Pony Club is to bring a saucepan my little portable gass stove and some Linseed - the kids LOVE with a passion cooking it up - one dear child refers to it as 'snot food'.

Sadly it is very hard to convince people to break away from the modern composite feeds. I'm currently trying to get one young rider to stop feeding every b****y thing under th esun to her head flicking horse. It's nigh near impossible. She's now feeding an allergy relief medication from the vet - treating the symptoms not the cause.
 
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