Weight of soaked feeds….dry or soaked?

[Melandmary]

This may well be a very stupid question but for weight management I need to be sure my old mare is getting 10kg of food to maintain her weight. She is mostly preferring her soaked grass nuts and fast fibre . She has 3kg combined split between 2 meals and then hay and haylage at 7kg but she is leaving a lot of that. Teeth checked last week. Just wondered if the soaked feeds actually count as more even though the extra weight is water if that makes sense?

 

[Starzaan]

1.5kg is a staggering amount of food at any one time. May I ask why she is being fed so much?
Even for a seriously poor rehab I wouldn’t be feeding that quantity of hard feed all at once.

 

[TheMule]

1.5kg dry weight will swell up to a huge volume and be far more than the stomach can comfortably accommodate and meaningfully digest.
If you feel you need to feed that much it needs to be split between 3 or 4 feeds

 

[fidleyspromise]

It's the dry weight that you count towards their daily ration.
Grass Nuts are given weight for weight in replace of hay.
My mare needed 8kg of hay so I gave her 8kg of grass nuts last year a day. I soaked it in 2 buckets both given in the morning as I could only go to yard once a day. After a couple weeks my mare kept some time between eating all of it so it lasted longer. The buckets I used were large trugs and it was made as a soup so very watery.
I spoke to Allan and Page and they advise my mare could only have x amount of Fast Fibre a day as it's a partial hay replacement so she couldn't have the full amount she needed. (My mare couldn't have any hay at all).
If I were feeding cereals then I wouldn't want more than 1kg per feed.

For putting weight on I'd be more inclined to give ad lib hay and I'd be looking at feeds that are designed for adding weight. (I can't think of any specifics off the top of my head)
Has she been wormed?

 

[Melandmary]

Hi and thanks for the replies, I am glad I posted. The mare is 27 and is usually 500kg and lives out all summer however in winter once the field is a big or icy they come in to live on hardstanding and sand school with access to a barn for shelter. I have 2 others that have ems and need to lose weight so ad-lib is not possible. All haylage ( low sugar) and hay also tested is weighed and put out 3 times a day but she just doesn’t eat that much of it and then my fatties hoover it up meaning they just get fatter. I started bringing her in and tying her up with haylage on the floor, she maybe eats 1.5 kg and then stops eating so I introduced the sloppy mash and that she does eat. Her teeth were checked last week and all fine, she has never quidded her hay but last winter she dropped to 440 and this year I was trying to maintain her weight better. I will split that into 3 feeds

 

[Melandmary]

Note to add I have tried stabling her to leave ad-lib hay but she won’t eat at all because she is worried about being in the stable hence I tie her up outside one so the others can’t get her food, I have rugged earlier and bought a warmer rug for bad weather, I have fed hay from on the floor incase she would find it easier to eat than hay nets and I have tried bute incase it’s due to her arthritis plus the dentist last week. Her condition score has maintained at 3.5 out of 5 all summer and up until the cold spell 2 weeks ago and then she dropped 10kg

 

[PinkvSantaboots]

Thats a huge amount of feed for 2 meals a day I would be looking to reduce the amount and adding something like micronised linseed or Equijewel as you don't need to feed so much but it puts weight on.

Feeding huge volumes of feed is not necessarily the best way to keep weight on as most horses struggle to consume that much, its also not that good for them.

 

[HollyWoozle]

What kind of mash are you feeding?

We have a 27 year old pony living out with an EMS mini and I know it is hard to balance that in terms of forage, although our old chap does eat hay which helps. In this case we split them at mealtimes and feed a mash suitable for seniors and he is looking really well on that, but I think he is probably naturally a better doer than yours which helps a lot. If you can split your meals into three and make them more calorific that seems the best bet to me.

 

[Melandmary]

It was just grass nuts 1kg but then I added 500g of fast fibre. She has 50 ml scoop of linseed in each feed. I have cut it down today .

 

[Fruitcake]

It's dry weight that counts. The extra water weight doesn't count towards the allowance as it's just water. (In fact, I might be wrong, but I think a proportion of the 'dry' pellets is also water as they're not actually completely dry.)

1.5kg of grass nuts is probably only about 3/4 stubbs scoop so not that huge an amount for a 500kg horse. Most feed manufacturers say you can feed grass nuts up to ad-lib amounts as a hay replacer, I think.

 

[AdorableAlice]

A STUBBS ENGLAND scoop typically holds 2kg of cubes, 1.5kg of mix and 0.5kg of chaff (taken from their website)

 

[Fruitcake]

A STUBBS ENGLAND scoop typically holds 2kg of cubes, 1.5kg of mix and 0.5kg of chaff (taken from their website)

Yes, that's about what I thought. I don't feed anywhere near 3/4 scoop to my fatties (they get a token cup of Alphabeet to carry supplements) but in the past, I've given oldies a scoop of Alphabeet at a time alongside grazing and hay.

 

[SEL]

If her teeth are ok then many of the veteran mixes give a lot more calories per scoop. You could add more linseed too.

 

[TGM]

If you are looking to put on weight then I'd drop the Fast Fibre as it is a low calorie feed for good doers. You could give her micronised linseed instead which is calorie dense and should help reduce the volume of feed a little.

 

[Melandmary]

I use a measuring jug which I have weighed so I know it was 1kg. I thought that as so many people feed them as hay replacement that 1.5kg in a trug wasn’t too much when served as a thick soup. I am trying to maintain weight more than add it but I will have a look at the veteran mixes. Unfortunately 3-4 feeds per day aren’t doable for me as I work. How do people manage using these feeds as complete hay replacements if they can’t leave large quantities out overnight for example. Fortunately I am not in that position but for future reference would like to know

 

[Melandmary]

Just bumping this thread as I have been researching veteran feeds and looking at the spillers senior mash. It states on their website that a 500 kg horse can eat 11.5kg a day fed as a total hay replacement split between a minimum of 4 feeds which would be almost 3kg per feed. How does this differ from me feeding grass pellets as a mash when I can only feed 1kg at a time or does the senior mash not swell as much? I try to avoid soya and wheat feeds which are the ingredients in the senior mash but I guess at 27 her holding weight is more important and they probably aren’t going to do her much harm now ?

 

[ihatework]

Just bumping this thread as I have been researching veteran feeds and looking at the spillers senior mash. It states on their website that a 500 kg horse can eat 11.5kg a day fed as a total hay replacement split between a minimum of 4 feeds which would be almost 3kg per feed. How does this differ from me feeding grass pellets as a mash when I can only feed 1kg at a time or does the senior mash not swell as much? I try to avoid soya and wheat feeds which are the ingredients in the senior mash but I guess at 27 her holding weight is more important and they probably aren’t going to do her much harm now ?

With these sorts of feeds is she snacking/trickle grazing or just wolfing the whole lot down quickly?

The bulk of these feeds are fibre so if she is regulating herself somewhat I would pretty much ad-lib it. If she is eating it like a hard feed it will need more consideration.

 

[Melandmary]

Lottie eats it over about 20 min-half hour. Sometimes she leaves a bit and nibbles some haylage and then goes back to it, sometimes she doesn’t eat it all . She just doesn’t seem to have a huge appetite so getting the quantity required to hold her weight into her- especially if I have 2 spread it out over 3 or 4 feeds is a tough ask. On the advice of this thread I am just feeding 1kg at a time of grass nuts soaked with 100ml of linseed 3 x a day. She has to come in for this so my others don’t eat it. She is tied up with a 2kg haylage net alongside it and a bucket of water. She usually Eats all the mash and about 1kg of haylage and then wants to go back out on to the hard standing with the others where there is also hay/ haylage . She is not even greedy for grass when she has plenty of it, she will eat for an hour or 2 then rest. I have started giving her 1 Bute every other day to see if that helps ( she is arthritic).

 

[Melandmary]

Here is a recent pic of her if I can manage to put one on it will be a first ?

 

[Melandmary]

I think she just looks about right at this weight, obviously lacking muscle tone but she has been retired for 2/3 years