Please help me choose a chaff

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pipper

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I feed one of our oldies unmollassed sugar beet. Salt. Equivite pro hoof and magnesium and she does very well although I stuggle to keep her feet good (soft hoof wall - cracks and breaks) I use hoof hardner and cornucrscine - but that's another story!!
I feel during the winter I would like to add a chaff to her feed - what would you recommend please?
 
Top Chop Lite. Sugar/molasses free, mint flavoured and quite a fine chop so easier for oldies. Or skip the chaff and use Fast Fibre instead; excellent stuff.
 
I've recently started my oldie on Dengie Hi Fi Senior. She has very poor teeth and this is the only chaff/hay replacer she can manage to eat now. It smells lovely, is nice and soft and little mare loves it. :)
 
Mine has a big handful of Molichop Herbi twice a day in winter. It contains low sugar cane molasses, whatever that means - I'm lucky I don't have to worry about sugar content in feed, so tend not to look.

By the time you've added the garlic, turmeric, carrots and a splash of warm water it smells so gorgeous you could eat it yourself!

Goldenstar, you've just transported me back to my teenage days when we used make our own with a big cast iron chaff cutter! It looked like a big mangle - but the youngsters wouldn't have any idea what that looks like!
 
diamonddogs said:
Goldenstar, you've just transported me back to my teenage days when we used make our own with a big cast iron chaff cutter! It looked like a big mangle - but the youngsters wouldn't have any idea what that looks like!
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We've got one of these at our yard - love it! Cut all our own chaff from the hay we have included in our livery. Used it for the first time in an age on Monday and my arms still hurt!
 
So what do you want this chaff to do? Is it just to add a bit of texture to her feed and so you need a low calorie chaff (you say 'she does very well' - does that mean she is a good doer)? Or do you want it to add some extra calories to her diet to keep weight on over the winter.
 
TGM said:
So what do you want this chaff to do? Is it just to add a bit of texture to her feed and so you need a low calorie chaff (you say 'she does very well' - does that mean she is a good doer)? Or do you want it to add some extra calories to her diet to keep weight on over the winter.
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Sorry - wasnt very clear - she is ok weight wise and in work (hacking and Dressage) just felt i needed something 'extra' for the winter. Perhaps I dont - what do you think? is the sugarbeet and supplements enough?
 
Another vote for Dengie, I've been feeding their products for years now and I've found them to be really cost effective. I feed a straight forward molasses free chaff in the summer for supplements and swap over to molasses free alpha chaff in the winter if they need a bit more to keep them going.

Here are my two on the Dengie website :) http://www.dengie.com/love-fibre/why-we-love-fibre/golden-oldies-love-a-fibre-diet/
 
pipper said:
Sorry - wasnt very clear - she is ok weight wise and in work (hacking and Dressage) just felt i needed something 'extra' for the winter. Perhaps I dont - what do you think? is the sugarbeet and supplements enough?
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Have you kept her over a winter before? Or do you know whether she is prone to losing weight in winter?.

To be honest, unless she is known to be a poor doer over winter the personally I would leave her as she is for now and just monitor her weight. If she starts to lose a bit then I would up her hay ration, and only after that would I start to add extras to her bucket feed. If you do find that she needs extra food to maintain weight then the various grass chaffs are usually a good source of calories and generally very palatable.
 
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TGM said:
Have you kept her over a winter before? Or do you know whether she is prone to losing weight in winter?.

To be honest, unless she is known to be a poor doer over winter the personally I would leave her as she is for now and just monitor her weight. If she starts to lose a bit then I would up her hay ration, and only after that would I start to add extras to her bucket feed. If you do find that she needs extra food to maintain weight then the various grass chaffs are usually a good source of calories and generally very palatable.
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Agree.
Mine doesn't lose any weight over winter. If she did then the first thing I would do would be give her a bigger haynet overnight. If she was still losing even after extra hay I think I'd probably look at something more than chaff to supplement her feed, maybe sugar beet or linseed.
 
pipper said:
I feed one of our oldies unmollassed sugar beet. Salt. Equivite pro hoof and magnesium and she does very well although I stuggle to keep her feet good (soft hoof wall - cracks and breaks) I use hoof hardner and cornucrscine - but that's another story!!
I feel during the winter I would like to add a chaff to her feed - what would you recommend please?
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D&H Fibergy , smells lovely , good supplements in, horses do well on it, tempts even fussy feeders.
 
Personally I'd drop the beet as all beet contains an undigestable carbohydrate. This *might* be why her feet are staying soft; also is she prone to thrush?

I'd swap to Copra if you want a "mash" feed or grass nuts. Re chaff; if you're just feeding to bulk out the feed I'd use something like Halleys Just Grass that doesn't have any chemicals, "floor sweepings", additives etc
 
I use Dengie healthy hooves and impressed so far, works well for my good doer. I was feeding biotin with hifi lite before.
If you email and ask they will send you out some samples so you can see what you think before you commit to a big bag.
 
TGM said:
Have you kept her over a winter before? Or do you know whether she is prone to losing weight in winter?.

To be honest, unless she is known to be a poor doer over winter the personally I would leave her as she is for now and just monitor her weight. If she starts to lose a bit then I would up her hay ration, and only after that would I start to add extras to her bucket feed. If you do find that she needs extra food to maintain weight then the various grass chaffs are usually a good source of calories and generally very palatable.
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This ^^.. I was going to ask the same questions TGM has initially :)
 
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