Straights v's commercial feed?

K9Wendy

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Does anybody still feed straights? How do you balance it with vitamins & minerals?

After a long discussion yesteray with an old fella who still does this I was wondering if it is more cost effective and better for the horse? He swears by flaked barley for conditioning (something we are still working on) and he thinks commercial food is a rip off!!

Any information on straights on the internet seems to be from feed manufacturers claiming that straights are unbalanced, time consuming and don't work out any cheaper!

Any thoughts or experiences in this ?
 

Governor

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I feed straights over winter as they're cheaper and more effective than the majority of conditioning feeds i've tried. It also gives a bit more control over energy as you can juggle the ammounts etc. I feed Equivite over winter anyway so it helps with balancing anyway. It still works out cheaper than £8 bags of conditioning cubes, and as for whether or not its better for the horse you know exactly what your feeding whereas its hard to tell with most branded cubes. Your lucky if you get a list of ingredients at all! But then they are balanced by professionals so supposedly a better diet. I don't see the time consuming bit unless your feeding alot of straights and want to sit down and work out exact nutritional needs...if not its just 2 feed bins to open rather than one!

I can't find flaked barley so I feed Barley rings instead (soaked alongside speedibeet) and HiFi Lite. He only has HiFi Lite in summer (more to carry his supplements than anything else - Hormonise and Flexylimbs) so I don't normally bother with anything else. Although this summer the grass has been slow to come through and generally been a bit poor so he's had some Horse and Pony cubes to tide him over.
 

K9Wendy

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Thanks that is very interesting. I am questioning the value of £8 bags of feed when straights do work out cheaper. We don't have a heating up situation so most of the article listed above does not apply to us. Bee could be on racing cubes and still be laid back! That article does mention oats heating up horses and to feed barley, I thought it was the other way round!! I think I need to read into this a little more...
 

seaview

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k9wendy where are you from I am from Northern Ireland too
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TGM

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I feed straights but with a slightly more modern twist as I base my feeds around alfafa. Two of mine are on alfafa only, whilst my older mare has some barley as well. I also feed a vitamin/mineral supplement.

One trouble with compound feeds is that to get full benefit from the vits/mins added you need to feed the recommended amount. If your horse is a good doer and you only need to feed a little, then your horse won't be getting the full amount of vit/mins. However, by feeding straights with a vit/min supplement you can easily decrease/increase the base feed according to whether the horse needs to gain, lose or maintain weight.

The trouble with the old-fashioned straight feeding is that some of the feeds such as bran and cereals have the wrong calcium:phosphorus ration, so feeding a lot of them can lead to imbalance if care is not taken to correct it.
 

K9Wendy

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Hi Seaview, I'm Co Antrim, just outside Carrickfergus, where abouts are you? With a name like that I am suspecting around the coast somewhere LOL...
 

parsley

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TGM - I have been looking into feeding my two straights but would like to read up on it a bit before hand because as you say - there is some balancing to do rather than just feeding. Do you know of any good books/articles that I could look at?
 

PapaFrita

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I feed straight oats which I balance with alfalfa (adds calcium) and add extra salt when it's hot. I also feed sunflower seeds for the oil but it's not really necessary in order to balance the oats, which are brilliant!
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NOT heating as many people believe.
 

TGM

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I've got Sarah Pilliner's "Practical Feeding Of Horse & Ponies" which is pretty comprehensive. And there is a good chapter on feeding straights in Jane Van Lennep's book "First Steps" - tells you how to combine alfafa, grain and beet to make a balanced diet.
 

K9Wendy

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TGM that sounds like a lot of good sense. I regularly watch people buy top brand feed, and give their horses 1/10 of recommended daily amount without added vitamins etc. I know when I was a kid our ponies lived on grass & hay, I remember feeling very superior the year we bought our first bag of pony nuts!! God I'm going back a long time LOL..

I do like the idea of feeding similar to what you are doing. I will look for those books.. Thanks
 
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