Just how badly are we feeding our horses?

I only feed straights, soaked oats, winter only if needed, good quality meadow hay. I did try Saracen feeds for a while, but realised it was no good for mine, all sorts of problems, my vet thought too high in protein. I always fed soaked oats and boiled linseed and hay all through the winter for the last 40 years, and used to boil the linseed at home.(I don't use the linseed now).

I won't use bags of mix at any price, I won two bags of a well known 'mix' at a competition and I gave it away.
 
Pearlsasinger said:
One of my favourite rants is the demand created by big companies' marketing, backed up by the equine press, which is directed at novice owners. This is particularly evident, IMO, in the feed and rug markets. Over-feeding and over-rugging create unhealthy horses.
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I don't blame the big companies and never will- WE decide what we spend on.

I have known lots of people who gave their native nearly obese pony a feed because "all the others get a bucket and I don't want him to feel left out" :o
I had one who was a tit at feed time if it did not have some,so I put some hay or a bit of chaff in it's bucket not a scoop of this,scoop of that ;)
Owners need to grow some balls and take responsability for themselves- YOU decide what you buy for your horse,do your research and don't be led by the person in the next box!


ETA, I must admit to a slight loyalty to D&H for feeds.
Every time I have called them for advice on a horses feed they have streddes the importance of ad lib good quality grass and hay-just as it should be IMO.
 
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Hadders said:
This is a really interesting article, and it's good to see that there are many knowledgable, experienced people out there!

It does leave me a bit confused on what I am doing though, and whether I am doing the right thing!

I had a new forest pony who made it to over 40 years old, he started being fed, pony nuts and bran in years gone by, then as he got older and the equine food market developed the nuts were replaced by mixes, the bran reduced but never fully removed and alfa brought in, and he did great, and I thought I was doing well with my feeding knowledge; but then after he went :( and I now have a 16 year old native and a 2 year old native, I am some what perplexed, I believed in the feeding that I was giving to my golden oldie, but I wonder now whether I should have the same belief with these 2.

The baby was on Baileys Stud balencer and hi fi, but having turned 2, no more balancer, and the teenager was laminitic when I first got him so is on Happy Hoof. I have been convinced that I should be continuing in my old routine of 2 small feeds a day, the one on happy hoof is fine, but I wonder whether I shouldn't be giving my youngster as much?

They are strip grazed in a herd situation - and the grazing is good, maybe I shouldn't be feeding the youngster at all? I am completely confused!

Having done lots of research into the better feeds (and I have to confess to completely forgetting about straights and only looking at mixes having been brain washed by marketing!) I spoke to someone at D&H who suggested Suregrow or Ultimate Balancer, but airing more heavily towards the Ultimate Balancer - I was horrified at the price, no wonder they were pushing towards that!

What have other people done in this situation? I feel like I am chasing my tail and don't feel he is on the right food, but don't really want to go through too much trial and error!! :confused:
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Hadders, I am no feed expert, but I would say your ponies don't actually need anything other than grass and hay. However, some of us like to feed a little something from a bucket, for whatever reason. I have a native and a native cross that don't need feeding at this time of year, but I do give them a little bucket feed each day, my reasons are 1, to make them come to the gate when I go to check them, I have no problems with anyone thinking this is a lazy thing to do! 2, they are currently having some supplements, Brewer's yeast to stop them scratching their tails (we get loads of midges and they make my head itch like hell!) and calmag, which is supposed to help prevent fat deposits/cresty necks. This is the first summer I have used these and it's a bit of an experiment. 3, having had a pony in my youth that was naughty to catch, I like to 'reward' my ponies after they have been ridden, a little bucket of food will be the last thing they remember and this will hopefully make them more keen to come in. I give them a couple of handfuls of HiFi Lite, a handfull of high fibre cubes, a carrot and any other veg peelings/trimmings that are suitable for them. They also have some salt (a mix of sea salt and low salt). Neither of mine have had lami or any other problems, physical or behavioural, but I will admit that they are both a little fat!

Winter feeding is a bit differnt. I feed my 14.2 Alfa-A, molassed :eek: sugar beet, high fibre cubes and crushed oats, a bit of micronised linseed and a broard spectrum supplement (will probably use Pink Powder this time). I adjust the amounts according to his weight. My little sec B gets a handful of each but no supps, but I will up her amount slightly when we have snow. They get between one and three slices of hay a day each, depending on how well they're clearing it up, if I give them too much it gets wasted. Both mine come out of the winter far leaner than they went it, which is what nature intended! BTW, they both live out 24/7/365.
 
firewell said:
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!
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Well said!
I also look askance at the colic issue. I think it very unfair to blame "poor management" I don't believe it is necessarily poor management.
FDC
 
tristar said:
brilliant article, it encompasses most things i've earned over a lifetime.

i feed only staights, the basis of all horses diets should be the very best hay that you can get your hands on, they are hay making now, get out there and buy some, most horses only need supplementation of diet for breeding and work purposes where extra nutrition is needed for energy, that's why so many are too fat, or they are grazing too much on the wrong sort of grass, but that's another discussion.

the same applies to people, its not until you make the effort to cook food from scratch from basic ingredients that you realise how different you can feel and look, and how much more energy you can have from eating properly, next time you do the shopping just look on the boxes of what you buy and become aware of the crxp that is going into your body.
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Whoopeee so agree, I cook everything from scratch, noooooooo ready meals of any sort, don't shop in a supermarket, never go near one and it's true once you have eaten/cooked properly (and I have for years cooking for a large family) you realise what utter crap ready meals and the like are.
 
Numpty question alert!

I've owned my mare for a month, she's on good quality hay, grass and gets a handful of chaff just to give her reason to come in (she used to plant and be a right pita to get in before).

She looks just right weight wise.

I don't know how she fares in winter. She's a Welsh Sec D so I would imagine it won't be a struggle to keep weight on.

However, if she does drop a little, what would you recommend? She's only in light to medium work at the moment.
 
When I was a lass,many moons ago, the horse books and magazines recommended as food for horses,wait for it..................grass and hay! Then, if they started to loose weight because of the cold or the amount of work they did,feed a SMALL amount of oats in a big habdful of chaff. If that didnt do the trick,ie if they continued to loose weight, then feed a little barley,preferably boiled as well as the oats. After hunting a linseed tea was recommended and /or oatmeal gruel. All this is totally sensible to me. Just look at old photos of hunters,hard as nails,beautiful shiney coats ,in excellent condition. Of course,plenty of ridden exercise is needed too. I think feed manufacturers just play ino our modern anxieties and lack of time.
 
re Simple Systems, if you google "Charnwood Mills" you can buy the linseed and some other products such as brewers yeast,seaweed etc much cheaper. Its where SS buy theirs from.
 
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I'm going to stick my head up now (and risk being lynched!). I used to work for a feed company, sometimes I even worked on the phoneline speaking to owners. I feed my pony a commercial feed and having worked in QA for the company and seen the effort, paperwork and testing that goes into every stage of the manufacture I am more than happy to.

One thing that was always stressed to me and something I found myself repeating ad infinitum on the phoneline was "fibre, fibre, fibre" that was the first thing to ask people and one of the main things to stress. I've spent ages talking through management techniques with owners of fat ponies - not just feed them XYZ but have you looked at grazing, considered a muzzle, strip grazing, how much exercise, you can soak your hay, make sure you're still feeding enough fibre etc. etc.

I remember one particularly delightful (or not) young lady coming up to a trade stand at an event to talk about feeding and telling me her pony needed to be on a competition feed because he was an eventer and which one should she put him on? I asked he what he was currently on...pony nuts, chaff, hay, grass. What did he look / behave like - absolutely fine, weight fine, coat shiny, plenty of energy. I just told her to carry on and not to worry about a comp feed - no need! I had to point out that Over to You competed at Badminton on Horse and Pony cubes before she would believe me that he would be fine.

I have a good doing native - he gets a hanful of hifi lite and the required amount of a commercial low calorie balancer along with restricted grazing and weighed out hay and at the moment I am working him like a demon to try and keep his weight down!!
 
Syrah said:
Numpty question alert!

I've owned my mare for a month, she's on good quality hay, grass and gets a handful of chaff just to give her reason to come in (she used to plant and be a right pita to get in before).

She looks just right weight wise.

I don't know how she fares in winter. She's a Welsh Sec D so I would imagine it won't be a struggle to keep weight on.

However, if she does drop a little, what would you recommend? She's only in light to medium work at the moment.
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LOL!!! I have a SecD, don't you worry about winter my love, it's a welsh bred. It's great granma probably lived on nowt but moss.
If it drops then GOOD!!! It's meant to, this is also how ponies get lami in spring!!!! People let them get fat in winter so they lose that BUFFER zone.
 
tallyho! said:
LOL!!! I have a SecD, don't you worry about winter my love, it's a welsh bred. It's great granma probably lived on nowt but moss.
If it drops then GOOD!!! It's meant to, this is also how ponies get lami in spring!!!! People let them get fat in winter so they lose that BUFFER zone.
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absolutely agree 100%. problem is today we panic if they loose weight in winter. they are designed to!
 
I'd have to agree that when straights were fed when I was a youngster horses did not have the problems that they seem to have these days with behavior. A bit like us with E numbers etc. I think we over feed and use additives that we do not really fully understand.
 
tallyho! said:
LOL!!! I have a SecD, don't you worry about winter my love, it's a welsh bred. It's great granma probably lived on nowt but moss.
If it drops then GOOD!!! It's meant to, this is also how ponies get lami in spring!!!! People let them get fat in winter so they lose that BUFFER zone.
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Thank you :D Cheap as chips to keep ;)
 
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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Me too. I'm amazed at some of the (insert rude word of choice) that people feed their horses nowadays. Since when exactly did horses "naturally" eat rubbish like sugar beet "peelings" and what is copra meal all about - horses do not eat coconuts! Years ago, before the days of "processed" horse feeds, you never heard of or saw skin conditions etc and I'm sure a lot of it is down to manufactured feeds. I quite like the look of coarse mixes but there are always the unidentifiable bits and heaven only knows what is in cubes.
 
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I think this article talks more sense:-
http://www.admani.com/allianceequine/TechBulletins/FeedAHorseLikeAHorse.htm

This is what I agree with. I wouldn't feed my horse pure oats or barley. These modern slow release feeds are based on digestible fibre and oil I think they are best if you must feed something as they are more natural.
Horses don't eat oats in the wild do they. Oats are a human food, we have them in our porridge and our flapjacks.
 
Faithkat said:
Me too. I'm amazed at some of the (insert rude word of choice) that people feed their horses nowadays. Since when exactly did horses "naturally" eat rubbish like sugar beet "peelings" and what is copra meal all about - horses do not eat coconuts! Years ago, before the days of "processed" horse feeds, you never heard of or saw skin conditions etc and I'm sure a lot of it is down to manufactured feeds. I quite like the look of coarse mixes but there are always the unidentifiable bits and heaven only knows what is in cubes.
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They absolutely love sugarbeet whole - and what you get is not the peelings but the remains of the whole root that has been shredded and soaked in hot water to remove the sugar. I've been feeding sugarbeet since the '60's when it was used instead of chaff because you couldn't buy chaff then. I used to dread the days at one place where I worked and I had to chaff the hay for the week. 2 hours later and arms like chewed string from rotating the wheel!

Coarse mixes were the start of the problem.
 
firewell said:
I think this article talks more sense:-
http://www.admani.com/allianceequine/TechBulletins/FeedAHorseLikeAHorse.htm

This is what I agree with. I wouldn't feed my horse pure oats or barley. These modern slow release feeds are based on digestible fibre and oil I think they are best if you must feed something as they are more natural.
Horses don't eat oats in the wild do they. Oats are a human food, we have them in our porridge and our flapjacks.
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Yes horses do eat oats in the wild except that they eat them straight off the grassy stalk! Drying them just make them easier to store. They also eat Barley, Corn, Sugarbeet, Turnips, carrots, apples, grass, and heaps of herb plants.

'Based on' is about all the modern feeds can be described. The rest of the stuff in them is C**p.

Horses actually don't particularly like oils - some won't touch it. It is one of those things that you have to introduce really slowly.
 
firewell said:
I think this article talks more sense:-
http://www.admani.com/allianceequine/TechBulletins/FeedAHorseLikeAHorse.htm

This is what I agree with. I wouldn't feed my horse pure oats or barley. These modern slow release feeds are based on digestible fibre and oil I think they are best if you must feed something as they are more natural.
Horses don't eat oats in the wild do they. Oats are a human food, we have them in our porridge and our flapjacks.
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cereals are a type of grass,developed over hundreds of years to have a bigger seed head. Thats all they are,so,yes,in the wild horses would eat oats ,wild oats. Copra on the otherhand wouldnt be eaten in its natural form,nor would sawdust or chicken s**t. Thats the most desturbing thing about all this. Horses eat turnips,carrot and sugarbeet too,they are just simple and natural,the horse eats them as they are grown,not altered in anyway.
With oats,if you go through some old horse management books, they tell you exactly how they were fed. 1lb of oats mixed with 1lb of chaff,for example,and this several times a day,at least 4 times. The chaff was homemade,a mix of hay and oat straw,and 1lb is an awful lot volume wise. the oats have the husk on them and so there is lots of fibre in the manger. the problem with today is that people try to get away with feeding 2 bucket feeds a day. We try to make the horse fit our life style,not us its. Oats are very good food for horses,as is barley and sugarbeet. Young people have been indictrinated by advertising,cant think things through half the time. For a horse doing less than 3 day eventing or hunting 3 times a week most additional feed is uneccessary,providing the horse has good grass and good hay in winter.
we mollicodle and overfeed. The advertisers and big feed companies have won,our horses are worse off for it and our bank balances the poorer.
 
Horsesforever1 said:
cereals are a type of grass,developed over hundreds of years to have a bigger seed head. Thats all they are,so,yes,in the wild horses would eat oats ,wild oats. Copra on the otherhand wouldnt be eaten in its natural form,nor would sawdust or chicken s**t. Thats the most desturbing thing about all this. Horses eat turnips,carrot and sugarbeet too,they are just simple and natural,the horse eats them as they are grown,not altered in anyway.
With oats,if you go through some old horse management books, they tell you exactly how they were fed. 1lb of oats mixed with 1lb of chaff,for example,and this several times a day,at least 4 times. The chaff was homemade,a mix of hay and oat straw,and 1lb is an awful lot volume wise. the oats have the husk on them and so there is lots of fibre in the manger. the problem with today is that people try to get away with feeding 2 bucket feeds a day. We try to make the horse fit our life style,not us its. Oats are very good food for horses,as is barley and sugarbeet. Young people have been indictrinated by advertising,cant think things through half the time. For a horse doing less than 3 day eventing or hunting 3 times a week most additional feed is uneccessary,providing the horse has good grass and good hay in winter.
we mollicodle and overfeed. The advertisers and big feed companies have won,our horses are worse off for it and our bank balances the poorer.
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Soooooooo eloquently said.....and so true, made me smile am so glad there are still quite a few that know the principles of good feeding. Mine have always had oats(when necessary) ie in hard work, if not ridden more than 3 times a week they get hay and that's it.
 
Horsesforever1 said:
we mollicodle and overfeed. The advertisers and big feed companies have won,our horses are worse off for it and our bank balances the poorer.
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Yes, the feed companies have even invented stuff to sell to those who they made little money out of in the past, the owners of natives and cobs. Think LoCal, Happy Hoof and all those other Lami-friendly diet feeds.
 
Horsesforever1 said:
cereals are a type of grass,developed over hundreds of years to have a bigger seed head. Thats all they are,so,yes,in the wild horses would eat oats ,wild oats. Copra on the otherhand wouldnt be eaten in its natural form,nor would sawdust or chicken s**t. Thats the most desturbing thing about all this. Horses eat turnips,carrot and sugarbeet too,they are just simple and natural,the horse eats them as they are grown,not altered in anyway.
With oats,if you go through some old horse management books, they tell you exactly how they were fed. 1lb of oats mixed with 1lb of chaff,for example,and this several times a day,at least 4 times. The chaff was homemade,a mix of hay and oat straw,and 1lb is an awful lot volume wise. the oats have the husk on them and so there is lots of fibre in the manger. the problem with today is that people try to get away with feeding 2 bucket feeds a day. We try to make the horse fit our life style,not us its. Oats are very good food for horses,as is barley and sugarbeet. Young people have been indictrinated by advertising,cant think things through half the time. For a horse doing less than 3 day eventing or hunting 3 times a week most additional feed is uneccessary,providing the horse has good grass and good hay in winter.
we mollicodle and overfeed. The advertisers and big feed companies have won,our horses are worse off for it and our bank balances the poorer.
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Ok, im confused (please bare with me ;) ). If oats and barley ect are fine and natural to feed horses, then why does research say that grains and starch are bad for horses? How come they cannot be digested properly if they are meant to be good? I do get confused by oil as well because I don't really think horses eat oil in the wild..
 
Oh I definitly agree that we feed too much. My horse drops and gains weight on how much hay,haylage and grass he gobbles up, not his hard feed. That I have noticed :). If he has a bad lot of hay he doesn't eat it all, trails it all through his bed and drops off really quickly. Last winter I fed haylage and he bloomed, probably because it was better stuff then then the horrid hay produced from last summer.
 
Horsesforever1 said:
For a horse doing less than 3 day eventing or hunting 3 times a week most additional feed is uneccessary,providing the horse has good grass and good hay in winter.
we mollicodle and overfeed. The advertisers and big feed companies have won,our horses are worse off for it and our bank balances the poorer.
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Could you please come and explain this to my TB? He has ad-lib haylage, but will still drop weight if not given hard feed, even doing 0 work. You really can't generalise about horses like this.
 
i find this thread absolutely fascinating!
When i was over in Spain only about 4 or 5 of the horses on a large yard in the summer got hard feed and those were the ones competing every weekend or doing a lot of work in the riding school and needed a bit extra.
Then i came back over here and people just seem to feed without really thinking one horse was getting a lot of haylage everyday and fed hard feed despite being in no work to very light work. i was always taught at PC etc. to feed according to the amount of work the horse has done and i think that mentality has been lost people feed out of habit and feed what they think the horse needs because if it was a person it would need this that and the other ...
I am very curious as to what constitutes good forage ie. grass and haylage because i think that is another problem that the grazing here is just not great for horses to make another comparison to Spain as i dont have much else to compare to the grass and the hay spelt amazing as it had lots of different grasses and herbs it smelt good enough to eat :P
 
THANKYOU Bakedbean. The post about Spain is interesting. re the TB in the post above, do you have access to good grazing? all the TB's around me,and there are a couple of studs BTW have well covered ,indeed some too fat TB's grazing their paddocks. Maybe a dose of Dr Green would help. marmalde76, thats a very good point and very true. firewell,please read my previous post again, the oat itself [ or barley] os fed with a large quantity of fibrous material at each frequent feed,a little grain,a lot of chaff and at least 4 times a day. not as many feed today,which is a relatively big bucket feed twice a day with relatively little fibre content compared to the old feeding regime. its a bit like us eating a large tub of double cream on a two strawberries with a dollop of sugar added to make it sweet, instead of a large bowl of strawberries,no sugar a a drizze of cream. Sorry its difficult to relate to our diet and thats not a great comparison maybe others can think of better way to put it.
 
Do people not think a lot of the health/weight/behaviour issues we see nowadays are more down to workload (or lack of) than feeding?

I have worked on 2 very similar eventing yards with 20-30 horses up to 4****.

One yard fed mainly straights with a few supplements and the other fed mixes and cubes.

Both yards had horses looking in great condition and all of the horses were well behaved, easy to ride and handle, even when they were fit enough for Advanced eventing.

Over at least 60 horses on both yards and without doubt the biggest factor in their behaviour was the fact they all worked 'properly' everyday- not to do with whether they had straights or a compound mix.
 
Hurray! we are talking proper horsemanagement at last! feed regime combined with work and condition. This is the essence of what its all about. Yes,many horses today are overfed and underworked. simples.
 
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