Mollased Sugar Beet - How much is safe to feed?

[djlynwood]

My horse will not touch speedi beet which I wanted to feed to help with weight gain and just wanted to feed it with her feed and leave a bucket in stable to munch through the night.

Tried the mollased sugar beet and she wolfs it down but Ive heard that I cant feed as much of it as the speedi beet.

She is currently on 1 big stubbs scoop dry weight a day, can I feed more?

She currently has

1 scoop of Alpha a oil
1 scoop of Top Spec Cool Condition Cubes
1 coffee mug of linseed
1/2 dry scoop measure of sugar beet (soaked)

She has this twice a day but in the evening feed she get Equimins Advance 80grms.

I also leave 2 x stubbs scoops of alpha a oil in a bucket for her to munch on overnight. Im thinking of adding extra sugar beet to this.

She is on ad lib hayledge and turnout during the day.

Sorry, back to main question, is it ok for me to feed more sugar beet?

 

[JillA]

Could be worth trying the soak-rinse-soak to remove lots of the sugars that the ECIR group recommend for their IR horses? But it could be that he is "hooked" on the sugars, producing insulin to counteract them and needing sugars to use up the insulin. If she doesn't have any problems with sugars right now, feed as much as you like but maybe gradually reduce the amount of molasses by soak-rinse-soak, then you may finds he will accept unmollassed versions quite well.
That sounds like a lot of food if she is eating lots of haylage as well - what is her condition like?

 

[djlynwood]

She has been on this diet for two weeks now.

She was looking ribby and lacking in energy. She was forward going so I knew when I was using my legs too much that she needed something more in her feed.

She was previously fed unmollased alpha a, linseed and balancer. But would pick and choose if she ate it or not. I added the speedi beet but she completly left her food with it in.

Also along with the hayledge not being consistant quality at the yard, she would sometimes eat that and sometimes not. We have to get our hayledge from the yard.

She is rugged up to the max day and night. Her energy level is starting to return and she has not gone silly. Hacked out in high winds last night and she was cool. She is still a bit ribby.

Maybe Im expecting too much too soon.

 

[Roasted Chestnuts]

I feed half a large round scoop 4 times a day in our stabled horses feed.

The coblet gets fed once and she gets a full large round scoop plus her chaf and oats.

Its the molassed kind I feed and I prefer it to speedibeet for adding condition and fibre to feeds

 

[SaharaS]

I had a very well thought of equine nutritionalist once tell me I could increase my mares dry weight to 5 full scoops a day if she needed it..ie full hard work in a cold winter..that was said to be perfectly safe.

Could you source some unmollassed which you can get in pellet form just like mollassed..and a sack of normal molassed..start off using 100% of your desired dry weight and gradually replace a minimal amount with the same amount of unmolassed..this way even if it is a pellet at a time, the change should be so subtle that she won't actually notice..then eventually you will be on 100% unmollassed and she won't know!??