Supplement carrier

[chaps89]

Currently madam gets her equimins advance complete and salt in a small amount of Countrywide Natural Fibre chaff twice a day.
It's a plain oat straw/grass mix with mint but nothing else added. And now CW have gone out of business and I'm down to my last bag of it I'm looking at alternatives but there aren't any other plain chaffs.
Lots marketed as such but not when you look at the ingredients- soya oil or limestone or cinnamon and so on all added in. (She won't eat honeychop plain chopped straw or agrobs leichtgenuss, I've tried!)
I'm not keen on a pure grass chaff (she is such a good doer and treated like an ems pony) but wondered about speedibeet as an alternative? Or because she only gets a handful is grass chaff not such a problem?
I've contacted just feeds to ask about sugar/starch/de levels in their just chaff as that should do the trick but the it won't be overly easy to get hold of so trying to think of something fairly easily obtainable too.

 

[be positive]

Powders bind much better to a soaked feed than to chaff so you may find you can give less "feed" in the bucket, I use a tiny handful of grassnuts, single hand not double, to carry supplements they swell when soaked so they absorb supplements well and the calorie count is insignificant, I used to use speedibeet but had one or two that were not really keen on it whereas everything here will eat grassnuts no problem.
I stopped using chaff years ago because so much had additives or was coated in sugar in one form or another, the plain grass ones just seem to be an expensive form of hay and the straw ones were not eaten by mine who get adlib hay generally.

 

[MotherOfChickens]

I use Agrobs cobs and will switch over to the Kramer soft cobs. I am not a speedibeet fan and one of my ponies wont touch TB chaff although they will also both eat their Equimmins in TopChop Zero so they arent exactly fussy.

 

[JillA]

Bran is very palatable and you can damp it. Yes, it contains starch but if you use a small scoop full, at 12% the starch is going to be a minimal amount of the overall diet.

 

[Tiddlypom]

The CW natural chaff was great stuff, wasn't it. I was using it til they went bust.

I'm finding that Agrobs müsli is a good supplement carrier, much better than the Aspero or Honeychop plain chopped straw. I mix into a double handful of damped Agrobs müsli the following, (depending on which horse): Forageplus balancer, micronised linseed, salt, Boswellia, vit E powder and Prascend. All the horses eat it up, including the drama diva veteran picky mare, and there's no waste. A bag of müsli lasts ages used this way

 

[ester]

If she'll eat it in speedibeet is fine, and cheap really.

I used the agrobs aspero and now the wiesencobs - which are actually better as a carrier when using it alone. (The museli is a higher DE so I've not used it).
If we had a supplier I might consider the emerald green meadow magic nuts (soaked) instead, I got a sample at the weekend but would have to double check their ingredients list before using.
Of course there is Thunderbrooks too but I won't use them on principle when I have other options .


The thing is with overall diet is that all the EMS stuff says it isn't overall diet that matters, it is current intake in one go that matters.

 

[tda]

Could you change to the pellets rather than the powder then you could just wet them?

 

[JillA]

The CW natural chaff was great stuff, wasn't it. I was using it til they went bust.

You might be able to find out who made it for them if you dig deep enough - CW didn't have their own mill did they?

 

[Tiddlypom]

The museli is a higher DE so I've not used it.

Oh bum, so it is, but still only 9.8mj/kg, so hopefully not too bad seeing as I only need to feed a tiny amount of it.

JillA, I don't know who produced the CW chaff, it was good stuff, a cheap(!) mix of hay, straw and mint IIRC, that the horses loved.

 

[chaps89]

Thanks all.
That's a good shout JillA- a quick Google and I found an old thread on here where someone mentioned it was Spillers who supplied CW. Certainly Spillers don't have anything comparable themselves though. And on another note if anyone wants a spreadsheet with all the lo-cal chaff options I've created one
I did see the Thunderbrooks meadow hay cubes look like a good alternative too. Ester what is it you don't like about them?
Feeding the supplement just as pellets could work but I do like her to get her salt so for that reason a bucket feed is better suited.
In all honesty though, it sounds like speedi beet will be an easy to source, cheap and relatively healthy option though.

 

[Leo Walker]

Pink mash. Its 0.5% sugar and less than 3% starch and it puffs up to about 3 times the amount so hides supplements easily.

 

[ester]

My Thunderbrooks issues is only due to their behaviour towards people not the product (other than their base mix which isn't great for all).

TP I promised Frank the museli when he got old (the guinea pigs thought it amazing too) unfortunately for him he has likely become metabolic so we want to keep it as low as possible and can't chew chaff now he's old (hay is ok still). It's still not a bad one though especially if they are fussy.

We've two on the wiesencobs currently and use about half a stubbs scoop a day and as though both lick the bowls clean despite boswellia/bute/minerals I'm sticking with.

 

[chaps89]

Local feed stores don't stock keyflow and whilst work are pretty good about deliveries I think getting horse feed delivered here might be a bit of an ask...! But thankyou.
Ester, thanks for clarifying about TB.

 

[Queen Dotty]

I use speedibeat to mix my supplements, and then sprinkle a couple of scoops of mint over the top. The mint really helps make the feed more appealing. It costs about £10 for a big tub which I imagine will last at least 3 months. It is worth trying if your horse turns his nose up at speedibeat initially.

 

[HeyMich]

My horse has ulcers so I've done a fair bit of low-cal, low-sugar feeds research!

I've opted for Pure Feeds Fibre Balance, as it comes with the balancer already mixed in and my mare only needs a small amount of feed for all the daily vits/mins. I also sometimes give her some Fast Fibre, as it's just like Pink Mash but I can get it locally. She wolfs both of them down, and if I ever need to hid things in it (sucralphate for example) she doesn't notice.

I'd call Pure Feeds and ask for some advice.

 

[PapaverFollis]

Speedibeet works for us. Other things are probably better but easily available is high priority for me so we just stick with it.