Top Spec High Fibre mash vs Baileys Keep Calm?

[Char0901]

I wondered if anyone could help me navigate this feeding minefield?!

My mare is a good doer but can be a bit stressy. She was on Top Spec lite balancer and doing well but between two horses (other a cob) it just wasn't lasting so switched to basic hi-fi lite. Cob loves this but over a week or so my mare has decided that this cheaper chaff is not to her liking and is now turning her nose up to it and just eating her net.
Now it's colder she's not drinking as much so thought a mash would be a good way of getting a bit more fluid in her (she is on haylage but it's quite hay like at the moment)
She's previously been on Baileys keep calm and she liked it. I'm thinking of putting just her back on the Top Spec lite balancer and adding a mash.
I just don't know which one? The Baileys is cheaper but I don't know if that's because it's not as good? They seem pretty like for like.
Help?!

 

[Leo Walker]

I wouldn't feed either. Seems a very odd swap to go from balancer to chaff as well.

What are you trying to achieve with your feed? Do you need calories? energy? a token feed for supplements?

The amount of water in a mash is minimal. Salt in the feed is a better way to encourage drinking.

 

[TGM]

Agree with LW - your feeding strategy does sound a bit odd and I do wonder what your objectives are! I can understand feeding a balancer if you wanted to ensure that they are getting all their vit/mins etc. But I can't really see why you would swap it for a chaff like hifi lite which isn't a supplemented feed - you might as well drop the bucket feed altogether if they are good doers as they will get nothing more from the hifi than they get from their haylage. The Baileys Keep Calm is a supplemented feed so you don't need to feed a balancer with that if fed at recommended rate. If fed at less than recommended rate then you reduce the balancer pro rata otherwise you are doubling up on vit/mins. It is not clear from the Top Spec website whether their mash is fully supplemented or not!

If you want something hydrating to feed alongside a balancer, why not go simple and give something like soaked beet or soaked grass nuts - both of these are unsupplemented.