opinions on mollichaff feed

[Tim's Girl]

oh dear. i've decided to try it and see what happens. will keep and close eye on him. i'm quite lucky cos even though he is a tb he is very laid back so any behavioural change will show pretty quick. also gonna keep a check on his weight. was underweight when i got him and have maintained a nice size with him now. unfortunatley it is a cost thing. would love to keep him on it but once add in balancer and the cost of the alfa a and calm and condition my feed bill is more than my mates and she feeds 2!

 

[brown tack]

I've never seen any ill effects from any of the range, I've had 8 on it in the past and most of my happy hack friends feed it to.

I find my friends that are out competing and doing more tend to fed more "up Market" (if that's the right way to put it) types of chaff like d&h, top spec chaff etc

I did however change to safe and sound over the winter as it was all my fussy tb would eat.

I would use the mollichaff range again thou

 

[Amaranta]

I would hope vets would recommend feeds that the Laminitis Clinic endorse, maybe they know the content to be the same as recommended and give this as a cheaper alternative, I don't know.

Dodsen and Horrel used to do an Alfalfa feed, not sure if they still do or how much in comparison it would be though.

I have noticed differences in quality in Dengie Alfa-A-Lite though and will be keeping an eye on it and contacting them if it continues.

I've never been a lover of the sticky mollichop/chaffs that are out there, my horse can't eat them now anyway, but he has had the herby one over the years and liked it probably because of all the mollasses !

Actually the Laminitis Clinic's endorsement means diddly squat to me, companies pay around £10k for the endorsement and all it means is that the product will do no harm to a laminitic and people assume a product bearing the mark will prevent laminitis - it won't. A superb laminitic feed is TopSpec Antilam, please note it does not bear the Laminitis Trusts mark.

I am not a lover of heavily mollassed chaffs either and would agree that Mollichop is indeed mollassed, however, their Lite and Bloom chaff based feeds are not mollassed and are very low in sugar, both contain a vit/min supplement, the Lite also has added Biotin and Magnesium, whilst the bloom has added soya oil. As vets are not nutritionists I checked them out before blindly feeding either of them.

 

[Firewell]

Well my horse can be quite reactive to feeds and I haven't noticed a difference between feeding him HIFI or the mollichaff showshine. I like it because it has the added oil that's why I use it.
I think you would have to feed buckets of it to notice a difference, even hay is 9/10% sugar.
I agree not to feed something unhealthy if you don't have too but sugar is something that naturally occurs in a horses diet anyway. True I wouldn't touch any sugar products for a horse prone to laminitis but TB's aren't, they have different metabolisms to ponies and I'm not going to loose any sleep by the fact my horse has 12% sugar in his double handful of chaff. He's lovely, calm and rideable and looks a picture so that's all I care about.
We've always had blood horses and they have been fine on a bit of molichaff plus their normal feeds but they get worked 6 days out of 7 and don't get pandered too so maybe that's why.
I just think all the feed companies are jumping on the band wagon of releasing non molassed chaffs ect and charging a fortune for them. Everything in moderation at the end of the day .

 

[9tails]

I really wouldnt bother with mollichaff at all, it is chopped up straw covered in mollases, zero nutrients and very expensive.

If you want more bulk just feed sugar beet shreds soaked, just buy the ordinary ones you certainly dont need to soak for 24hrs, easily ready in half an hour.

Having seen a horse choke on speedibeet that wasn't soaked for the recommended 15 minutes, I really can't agree that normal beet that is recommended to be soaked for 24 hours would be fit to feed in half an hour. That's asking for trouble.

 

[Tim's Girl]

how horrible. i always soak my speedibeat for abit longer than the bag says. gave up on using sugabeet as had to remember to soak it 24hrs before and not always helpful when it started freezing during the winter.

 

[Loika]

I feed Applechaff which is supposed to contain apple but the must be very small and is very lightly molassed (light gold colour) as my girl is allergic to the heavy molasses on supermollichop, don't know why! Great as a chaff and not expensive either.

 

[Spyda]

Did try mine on Mollichaff, the Original and Apple versions but both were rejected. Only eaten under duress. Mollichaff Vetran was a BIG hit, though. Odd?!!!

That said, I don't really like the stuff and had only tried it to tempt fussy feeders (didn't work): Generally, it seems too sticky and sweet (although that didn't seem to impress my fussy wot nots).

Personally, I prefer to feed Hi-Fi, Spiller's Happy Hoof or GrazeOn/Readigrass.