The cost of feed

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Bossanova

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Is anyone else shocked when they buy their feed by how much it costs?! Not that long ago, a bag caused little more than £5.50, now even the value nuts etc are around this mark and everything else is extortionate!

My horse, for example, eats 1 bag of conditioning cubes at £8.60, 1/3 bag of micronised barley at £6.50, 1/4 bag alfalfa at £8.90 and a bit of sugar beet every 7 days. This means that she eats about £14 worth of feed a week, leaving out all forage
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GOOD GOD
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I know I underfeed but I have had P for how long now, 8 weeks? and I have only today bought a new bag of mix, still got a bin full of Hi Fi left and half a bag of Ultimate Balancer
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yup, i think that lots of people are going back to feeding straights and fibres simply to try to feed well but not pay the earth!

a couple of my friends are using soaked oats or barley based diets wih alfa-a and a oil simply as the price of mixes etc is so much if your horses cant live on air!

makes me feel old but i can remember when £6 was an expensive bag of feed!!
 
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GOOD GOD
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I know I underfeed but I have had P for how long now, 8 weeks? and I have only today bought a new bag of mix, still got a bin full of Hi Fi left and half a bag of Ultimate Balancer
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It shocked me big time when I realised today that she'd run out of nuts and I bought two bags just 2 weeks ago!! And I've just upped her feed as she's eating it all currently so she's on 1 1/4 scoop nuts, 1/2 barley, 3/4 alfalfa 3 times a day!!!
 
Woah!
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I bought in bulk in October (6 bags of Hi-Fi, 10 bags of maintenance nuts and 10 bags of Competition mix) and I've still got loads left, plus that has been for 5. I've decided once I've finished that lot I'm putting them on soaked oats, sugarbeet and black sunflower seeds. Except for the 2 mares who will be on Stud Mix.

I do agree feed has gone up a lot though.
 
I luckily dont have to feed alot,as mine are not in hard work, BUT, last year a bag of feed cost me £3.99 for basic pony cubes, this year they are £5.70!!.. also fed my youngster stud cubes.. not too bad at £5.50 a sack... but when i bought a sack of stud "mix" it was an amazing £9.20!!! and to cap it all, my blimin fussy foal, wouldnt touch it! what a waste!
 
Yes!!

Between 3 horses I use, every 2 weeks:
2 bags of cooked mix (€9.50) = €19
A bag of stud cubes (€12) = €12
1/3 of a bag of rolled barley (€8) = €2.60
1/2 bag of whole oats (€8.50) = €2.80
1/4 of a bag of oat balancer (€15) = €3.75
1/4 of a bag of TopSpec bloodstock balancer (€40) = €10

So €50.15 a week
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(though one is a very hard do-er)
 
In the middle of winter I was going through a sack of show mix a week at £9 a sack but it contains chaff so i suppose it doesn't work out too much more expensive than feeding mix and chaff. Our local feed merchant does their own brand nuts for £4.40 a sack which I think is pretty good. I nearly died the other day when I bought sugar and cereal intolerance diet, it was £10.60 !! There is definitely a big variation in prices round here depending where you buy it, in one place everything is at least £1 if not £2 more expensive than everywhere else, and that really adds up when you're buying 8 sacks of various feed.

We cut our feed bills dramatically this year by putting round bales of hay out in the fields. It meant they could live out so were only having one feed a day, and that is a real saving for 6 horses.
 
Yes have to agree we have our feed delivered weekly by a local lady but the feed seems to go up an up all the time
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Now the local farmer who provides our hay is banging on about hikes in hay costs if the bloody grass doesn't grow as we haves had no 'proper' rain for ages
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Oh deep joy!
 
blimey!! you should be near me! where i work basic cubes are £4.20 a sack and basic mix £5.15...... conditioning cubes are £6.45, i will however agree that across the board feed prices have drastically increased, we try to keep the budget range as low as possible but we still have to make a profit, or we would be out of business!!! i was quite shocked at the price increases of one particular company no wonder people are changing to our own range
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Archie gets through a bag of calm and condition a week
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Luckily Bloss is now not being fed much apart from a handful of alfa-a oil and some stud balancer. However she used to get through just under a bag a week of dressage mix.

We go to the feed store once a week to pick up something or other for one of them..........
 
I've been lucky the last 3 horses I've owned have all been Natural Born Bloaters so for roughly the last 7 years not had to feed a lot, Olympic never got fed he was always fat with loads of energy. Dolly is also enormous, it's hard to know how much to feed her though as so frenetic about everything so you can't really tell when she has run out of energy.

Moon sounds like Spot - Sis spends a fortune on him and he never looks fat, he also needs loads of energy food as well.
 
Rox is having performance concentrate and it is £8.95 a bag and I fetched 2 bags today. I only started her on it about 3 weeks ago, but we had to introduce it gradually, but I bet that I will use 1 a week. The propel Plus is £24.95. There is a feed merchant about 1/4 mile from our yard and one that is about 7 miles away but the furthest one is sooo much cheaper than the near one. For example I bought some of that green stuff `Effol` last week and I paid £9.95. I went to the furthest one today and it was £7.00
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What a difference.
Everything is so much cheaper, that it is worth the 20 mins travel to save such a lot of money.
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