Pony nuts

[squidsin]

I'm thinking of adding a scoop of pony nuts to my mare's feed to improve her condition. She gets a scoop of FastFibre (although swapping to SpeediBeet as cheaper) morning and evening with a scoop of HiFi Lite. Any recommendations? I was thinking maybe the TopSpec conditioning cube as it's cereal free and I don't want to fizz her up, but what about something more bargain basement like the Pegasus cubes? Any recommendations?

 

[ellie11987]

Personally, I'd avoid mixes and cubes to start with. I'd feed 1 scoop (dry weight) speedibeet between two feeds, a scoop of alfa a and 2 mugs micronised linseed with a min/vit supplement and ad lib forage. Get these basics and she should pick up but with spring on the way I wouldn't be too worried!

Pegasus cubes are the complete opposite end of the scale to cool condition cubes. You want to look at the DE of each feed, a DE of 12 (condition cubes) or over is very high calories but a DE of under 9 is low calorie (pegasus cubes). That means you would have to feed a ridiculous amount of pegasus cubes to get the same calorific intake as the topspec cubes so it may be more economical feeding conditioning cubes in this sense. The DE for linseed is 20, so you can feed a lot less to get the same calorie benefits without the need of excessive volumes of hard feed or starches.

You might also want to look at the starch/sugar levels of the feeds. Most cubes/mixes contain molasses and cereals that contribute to the sugar and starch levels and will probably fizz your mare up not to mention being bad for digestive and hoof health. Strip the diet back to basics to get weight on through fibre and oil as the body would be working harder to process high sugar levels.

you can get the linseed here: http://www.farmandpetplace.co.uk/pr...eed/conditioning/micronized-linseed-20kg.html

The linseed may seems expensive but lasts months and is fab for weight gain along with benefits to hooves, skin etc. Never used anything as good as this (coming from someone with a poor dooer TB!)

Other thoughts would be worms, is she up to date on worming? How old is she? Breed/height? Work level?