New feed ideas

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Hazel and Arnold

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Hi all, I'm looking into changing my horses feed. I currently feed him Pure Feeds Easy with Fastfibre. I'm feeding quite a lot as he is underweight which now makes this combination quite expensive and his feeds are massive which cant be good for him. I have spoken with Dengie who recommended I feed him Alfa A Oil with Alfa beet and their leisure vits and mins. Allen and Page recommended just calm and condition. I'm really not sure which one to go for. What do you guys think? He's a 16 year old arab gelding - bit fizzy and diagnosed with summer pasture rao, hence the weight loss. He is pretty much retired as he has a bad back and I don't have much time what with the kids and work etc. Thanks in advance. x
 
I would do what I always do, which is feed soaked grassnuts and speedibeet with dried grass chaff, in as many feeds as possible. Cheap and simple for the horse to digest. Oldies thrive on it.
 
I'm feeding Pure Easy just because that's what he's always fed and I've got two bags of it left. He has only suffered with his breathing for the last two months and has dropped weight very quickly (is now putting it back on slowly) so I was just upping his feed to put the weight on but its not enough. x
 
Have you looked at simple systems?

I have a 20 year old IDx who has always been so fizzy when fed lots of cereals and supplements. I put him onto SS last year when my other horse developed allergies to lucerne. It is so hard to get horse feeds with no lucerne in them!

I was so impressed that i put my 20 year old onto their diet as well. The last few winters he has dropped weight but not this winter. He has never looked so good in years. I used to feed him calm and condition but was alarmed at the starch and sugar content. Now he is feed grass nuts and lucie nuts, both of which get soaked like calm and condition, only longer. With a bit of greengold added it has been the cheapest year ever feeding 2 big 17hh horses. No cereal at all, no lucerne for my youngster obviously, low starch, low sugar ( below the magic 10%). The most natural feed regime I have ever used and I have been around horses for nearly 30 years.
Suitable for horses that tie up and have metabolic issues such as cushings.
The staff are so knowledgable when you call and can't help enough. Worth a call.
 
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C&C is full of sugar so I would avoid.

Interestingly there are two other threads open atm about beet, but I would really recommend it. Unmolassed sugar beet with a balancer (something like Pro Balance +). Sugar safe, good balance of minerals, good for metabolic issues, keeps condition without sending them nuts. And cheap as chips. I found it the only was to put condition onto a new, skinny, stressy TB; just ad lib haylege, unmolassed beet and oil (before the days of balancers as well!).
 
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Agree with some other posters and would start with speedi beet as the base... add a good balancer (I use Thunderbrook Base Mix as suitable for Cushings/EMS but contains micronised linseed, rice bran, yea sacc, bio mos, vits and mins) and either grass nuts/chaff or Alfalfa.

This sort of diet (dependent upon the grass nuts/chaff and alfalfa being unmolassed) is suitable for Cushings horses.

If your horse is lacking condition topline, you can add cold pressed linseed oil as well - I gave my boy a 5 litre bottle of it over 2 months and he put all his conditin back on and it's stayed even now ive stopped it (its £22.25 for a 5 litre bottle from Equimins - might be cheaper at your local feed merchant)
 
I can't help on the actual feeding, I've never had one that needs to gain weight, however I do add Alltech Lifeforce to my boys feed, it has meant he's only needed a chaff feed thought winter with just a small amount of ERS pellets for energy, even when we were struggling to cure his ulcers, he didn't loose weight. The lifeforce works to help them extract as much goodness from their feed as possible, may be worth considering, it has a whole load of other benefits too!
 
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