Low sugar/cal chaff or high fibre nuts?

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sydney02

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My 7yo 15.1hh HW cob is currently fed a low calorie balancer and a handful of grass nuts twice a day. He also gets ad lib hay and a few hours turnout everyday.

I want to take away the grass nuts once they run out and replace them with a scoop of either chaff or high fibre nuts to bulk his meals up and give him more time eating. Plus I like feeding horses :rolleyes4:

He is in good condition at the moment, a little chunky round the belly but no cresty neck or fat pockets on his quarters. He could do with more topline especially his back, but that will come with more work. So don't want anything conditioning or very calorific.

He's in light work atm doing 30mins to 1 hour a day of walk and trot, mixture of hacking schooling and jumping.

He doesn't need more energy, he is quite speedy and spooky (mostly due to lack of schooling) however I don't want to give him much more energy to put into his spooks ;)

He has poor skin and is barefoot so would ideally like to avoid alfalfa :o

I like the idea of A&P fast fibre and was also thinking I could soak those fibreblocks and they'd last a few days but that might work out quite expensive. I love the smell of the applechaff from mollichaff but its mollassed so maybe not best for the big lad :p

So if you made it through all that...any recommendations? What low calorie / low sugar / starch feeds do you use? Anything to avoid? Don't want to buy a sack of feed and find out noone rates it! TIA :)
 
Topspec do a top chop lite- it is alfalfa though but smells lovely! Could you possibly use that to "bulk out" his feed since you like feeding and add something such as biotin or linseed? For his condition in the skin and hoofs.

Or how about dengie healthy hoofs? I have no experience of this feed but it also smells quite nice!
 
I would stick with grass nuts but soak them and use Just Grass chaff stirred into the soaked nuts with a handful of linseed. That will give you a little more feed in the bucket and should improve the skin and help feet. I use Pro Hoof supplement, which whilst not cheap, does give results.
 
I am feeding my Exmoors the Agrobs cobs and am pleased with them-they absolutely need soaking though (they take no time at all with hot water, about 20mins with cold). They get some of this, salt. pro hoof and a bit of the Agrobs chaff. While the outlay isn't cheap, it seems to last forever (the cobs swell up massively).

I have fed the soaked fibre blocks-they are useful in very cold weather when you want to make sure they are getting fluid but not sure they will last soaked. Same with the Agrobs cobs actually they tell you to not store them soaked. I find the grass nuts and just grass way too much for them tbh.
 
My cob would jump a burning house if he thought there was a bucket of fast fibre with oat straw chaff on the other side of it. Plenty of bulk, takes him ages to chew through it (I'm generous with the chaff) and very low-cal.
 
Plain oat straw chaff from either Halley's or Honeychop. I am always wary of nuts because they are likely to have somethng to hold them together, which may well disagree with the horse. I would definitely avoid all alfalfa products.
 
MotherOfChickens said:
I am feeding my Exmoors the Agrobs cobs and am pleased with them-they absolutely need soaking though (they take no time at all with hot water, about 20mins with cold). They get some of this, salt. pro hoof and a bit of the Agrobs chaff. While the outlay isn't cheap, it seems to last forever (the cobs swell up massively).

I have fed the soaked fibre blocks-they are useful in very cold weather when you want to make sure they are getting fluid but not sure they will last soaked. Same with the Agrobs cobs actually they tell you to not store them soaked. I find the grass nuts and just grass way too much for them tbh.
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Agree with this. A few soaked Agrobs cobs make what looks like a huge meal for them! They last forever.
 
Holly Hocks said:
Agree with this. A few soaked Agrobs cobs make what looks like a huge meal for them! They last forever.
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I was really dubious about the Agrobs feeds tbh but am impressed-fussy horse is on the muesli and he loves it and it doesn't send him bonkers. ponies get a bucket feed which they love (they got bored of straw chop). All of them have great feet and coats atm too.
 
Thank you for all the replies! Have done some looking around on these suggestions...the honeychop oat straw sounds good, definitely going to try him on that.

I like the look of the agrobs feeds and they are certainly well recommended, they all have relatively low energy in them (around 8mj/kg) but have more sugar in than the oat straw (8% compared to 2%) but am I right in thinking anything less than 10% is considered a low sugar feed...? A lot less than the mollichaff ones in any case, they have low energy but are up to 20% sugar...

Can anyone explain me the difference between the digestible energy and the sugar levels...because these low energy feeds have varying sugar levels, is the sugar level important or is anything under 10% all good? :)
 
Ok so my understanding, and I am happy to be corrected, is that your horse gets energy from the fats, proteins and carbs in his diet, and the digestible energy is basically the energy that is available to your horse to be absorbed; and sugar is just sugar and entirely different to digestible energy. How much digestible energy your horse needs depends on things such as workload, breed, age, etc.
The sugar levels depends on what is actually in the feed, the examples you have been given in this post, agrobs and oat straw, have different levels due to the type of grass they are made from. Oat straw is literally just chopped straw so contains very low sugar, agrobs contains a mixture of different grass types which have higher naturally occurring sugars. Neither have added extras such as molasses so it is a question of preference.
 
If he is a bit spooky have a look at Mollichaff Calmer. It's a plain chopped straw chaff with camomile, lemon balm and magnisium. No mollases or anything.

I have my good doer on it and she is doing well. This time of year she also has a tiny scoop of beet, half a cup of lo call balancer and some hi fibre cubes in her ball.
 
Firstly I'd look at the mineral/vits content of your balancer - poor skin and spookiness can be indicators that he's missing minerals or micro-nutrients in his diet. Some of the specialist powder forage balancers may be better (foragePlus, progressive earth amongst others do very good quality broad-spec ones). Read the labels carefully and have a look at the articles on the forageplus website for useful info.

Lots of horses do well on soaked grass nuts as a carrier for the sups. I actually snip some of my pony's hay ration into chaff but she's a very small pony and has very small feeds (my size of 'scoop' is probably a lot smaller than yours OP!! :) )

Doing the amount of work he is doing he sounds the type of horse to do well on forage - just get his micronutrients right. (my Welsh mare is working more than your chap and she's building topline and muscle and great hooves/coat on just ad-lib forage and a high-spec supplement in a handfull of soaked grassnuts, oh and the steady work of course, but you know the importance of that.)
 
Digestible energy is basically the same as calories. So the digestible energy/calories in the diet can come from carbs (sugar and starch), fats/oils, protein, and in horses, fibre. This mean that you can have a high calorie but low carb feed if the feed is high in say oil and highly digestible fibre sources.

High carb diets can cause problems in some horses, eg azoturia/RER, laminitis etc. It is also thought that high carb diets can cause some horses to be spooky or excitable. You need to look at the combined sugar/starch content and generally 10% or below is said to be low and is what is recommended in diets for laminitics.

If you have a horse prone to weight gain who needs a token feed, then best to opt for one that is low digestible energy and low sugar/starch, like Fast Fibre, for example.
 
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My girl has cushings so I needed to cut back on what she has to eat and take out the sugars etc So put her on Dengi HiFi Mollasses free.
She has just a handful of this a day, benefit advance and a small cup of senior mix, mixed together with a little speedibeet.

Dengi have also brought out a new happy hoof chaff, again unmollassed.
 
sydney02 said:
My 7yo 15.1hh HW cob is currently fed a low calorie balancer and a handful of grass nuts twice a day. He also gets ad lib hay and a few hours turnout everyday.

I want to take away the grass nuts once they run out and replace them with a scoop of either chaff or high fibre nuts to bulk his meals up and give him more time eating. Plus I like feeding horses :rolleyes4:

He is in good condition at the moment, a little chunky round the belly but no cresty neck or fat pockets on his quarters. He could do with more topline especially his back, but that will come with more work. So don't want anything conditioning or very calorific.

He's in light work atm doing 30mins to 1 hour a day of walk and trot, mixture of hacking schooling and jumping.

He doesn't need more energy, he is quite speedy and spooky (mostly due to lack of schooling) however I don't want to give him much more energy to put into his spooks ;)

He has poor skin and is barefoot so would ideally like to avoid alfalfa :o

I like the idea of A&P fast fibre and was also thinking I could soak those fibreblocks and they'd last a few days but that might work out quite expensive. I love the smell of the applechaff from mollichaff but its mollassed so maybe not best for the big lad :p

So if you made it through all that...any recommendations? What low calorie / low sugar / starch feeds do you use? Anything to avoid? Don't want to buy a sack of feed and find out noone rates it! TIA :)
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Might be a stupid question but why the concern re hooves and alfalfa? Mine get a small feed of alfalfa chaff (unmolassed) and unmolassed beet twice a day. It's token amount but carries some supplements. Mine are both bare foot. The alfalfa was chosen as I have one mare who had ulcers.
 
Ceriann said:
Might be a stupid question but why the concern re hooves and alfalfa? Mine get a small feed of alfalfa chaff (unmolassed) and unmolassed beet twice a day. It's token amount but carries some supplements. Mine are both bare foot. The alfalfa was chosen as I have one mare who had ulcers.
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Not a stupid question at all - alfalfa doesn't agree with some horses and it often shows in the hooves and skin and behaviour. Many many others are absolutely fine. If your horse is fine with it it is a grand food, particulalry for ulcery horses.
 
Thank you. I've heard horses behaviour being affected by alfalfa but mine seem ok on it (they don't get much). Biggest difference I've seen is cutting out anything with added sugar - I used to feed happy hoof but it's sugar content is much higher than mixing your own unmolassed chaff etc.
 
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