Price of horse feed!

The price of feed is unbelievable at the moment! I remember working in a feed merchants just over 10 years ago and the basic brand bag of cool mix was £5, mollichaff was £3.90 and all dengie alfa a etc were less that £9.
Fingers crossed prices won't keep rising.
 
On Sunday I paid nearly £32 for two bags of spillers high fibre cubes from my local feed merchant which I had a 12 mile round trip to collect.

Afterwards I realised it would have been slightly cheaper to buy it from amazon at just over £30 with free delivery. Last time I liked it would have been a lot more expensive the other way around.
 
Feed is going up everywhere. Carrs Billington do their own brand bags of pony cubes/mix, conditioning cubes/mix and Veteran mix. They started at below £8 a bag 4 years ago. Now the conditioning cubes are £13.50 a bag. A couple of months ago they jumped from £12.49 to £13.50 overnight. They are made by Spillers.

My haylage went from £30 a bale to £45 between orders and it was all from last years stocks so not this years yet.

I am glad, in a way, I no longer have any tbs to feed for the winter though mine were good doers anyway.

Some places are clearly profiteering, others are just charging enough to make a profit to be as helpful to the consumer as possible.
 
poiuytrewq said:
I feel very grateful for my fat good doers for once.
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Me too, although mine are moaning their tummies are empty despite being not in the slightest bit thin. Have just popped a bale of straw out for them to nibble on. My other fields are too lush and too full of acorns atm - they will have to wait for winter proper to go in those!
 
Mine seem to be doing really well on their winter field at the moment and certainly don't seem hungry, so my ancient one is getting 1/2 a scoop of veteran vitality and the Welsh isn't getting anything (much to his annoyance). The older one was on a full scoop of VV during the drought, but our winter field was pretty lush when they went on it, so I've only just upped her feed from the token handful she's been having for the past 6 weeks (just to put her supplements in). Anyway the upshot is I haven't needed to buy any feed for a few months. Will be very interested to see what the price is when I do!
 
criso said:
Try adding fussy to a horse that's not a good doer. I'm stretching the Agrobs Musli with Grasstastic and possibly going to add beet but need the expensive stuff to keep him eating
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Not fun, I don’t envy you that. I’ve had a poor doer who was very fussy and sometimes went days eating nothing (so me throwing away buckets of wasted hard feed) so understand how stressful it can be even before these price hikes ?
 
poiuytrewq said:
Not fun, I don’t envy you that. I’ve had a poor doer who was very fussy and sometimes went days eating nothing (so me throwing away buckets of wasted hard feed) so understand how stressful it can be even before these price hikes ?
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I sort of know how far I can push adding in cheap stuff and usually an extra scoop of musli works if he turns his nose up at my blend.

He also occasionally decides it tastes better if I hold the bowl. I know I'm indulging him but I don't want to throw away expensive food and if he doesn't eat it immediately, he ends up standing in the bowl.
 
criso said:
I sort of know how far I can push adding in cheap stuff and usually an extra scoop of musli works if he turns his nose up at my blend.

He also occasionally decides it tastes better if I hold the bowl. I know I'm indulging him but I don't want to throw away expensive food and if he doesn't eat it immediately, he ends up standing in the bowl.
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Been there done that! I confess even now with my fat boy I will scrape the last handful if he doesn’t finish and hand feed because it contains his balancer which is expensive!
 
Another feeling fortunate to have good doers currently. Bags of feed last forever as I'm only giving a handful of Mollichaff Molasses Free and a ramekin sized scoop of fast fibre to get balancer etc in. I'd do away with the FF if the older cob wasn't so offended by plain chaff!
YO takes OTTBs on, and my god I hate to think of the cost of feed and forage she has to give them.
 
I'll be feed shopping at some point this weekend. I might have to sit down before they tell me the total as I suspect that it will be a bit of a shock.

How are everyone's hay and haylage prices faring? I need to buy hay soon too, so that might also be a shock.
 
Bagged haylage has gone up. Our hay that we buy onsite has stayed the same price but bales are smaller. Not sure if that is deliberate to keep prices the same or if the baler just happened to be set that way on that batch. A batch of bigger bales was rejected by my horse.
 
paddy555 said:
precisely what one of my neighbouring farmers was saying only last week. Plenty of grass but just no value in it.
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I've been finding this too.

Mine are in the winter paddock that's been rested since the end of March and topped once to prevent the dreaded ergot fungus.

I've been strip grazing but it's been getting so muddy that I've had to move the fence much more than I'm comfortable with and closing off the muddy bit behind them.

Given that they are a chunky Fell and a mini Shetland I was expecting them to balloon but neither of them have put on any wright at all, and the Fell has even dropped a bit of weight.

Given the lack of frost so far I'm very, very surprised.
 
Our straw went up 50p at the end of August, and so did haylage. Compromising by feeding some straw with the haylage as needed - suits them better anyway as they don’t get too fat but have full tummies. I put out a bale two days ago and most of it was demolished by the morning (between 6 of them). They had haylage too, so are definitely hungry.
 
Greyskull said:
I'll be feed shopping at some point this weekend. I might have to sit down before they tell me the total as I suspect that it will be a bit of a shock.

How are everyone's hay and haylage prices faring? I need to buy hay soon too, so that might also be a shock.
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I buy hay through the yard and so far the price of that has held steady, perhaps because they get so much in.

Bagged haylage has gone up £3.50 here, so with the doubling in price of wood pellets and the rise in shavings cost too, my horse is now only having hay.

Very grateful he's a good doer.
 
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