What to feed?

[DellaMoon]

My new horse arrives on Sunday and I'm in a dilemma over feed! She's wintered out with just hay and is looking somewhat poor. She's Westphalien rising 3. From Sunday she will be in at night, rugged and fed ad-lib haylage (a low energy haylage). With there being a lot of change to her diet I'm not sure whether I should start feeding her straight away or let her get used to the haylage first then introduce feed. My argument for feeding immediately is to get a haylage balancer into her to help her adjust to the change. It will literally be a token feed of half scoop of chaff with a few nuts and probably the NAF haylage balancer.

So my questions:
Would you feed straight away or wait until she's settled on Haylage?
What chaff should I feed - HiFi Lite, HiFi original or HiFi good doer?

Thank you for your help!!

 

[teddyt]

Make sure you get some of the hay so you can change over gradually, as you should with any feed. You shouldnt just change from one source of forage to another.

Then slowly introduce a high fibre feed with a vit/min supplement. Possibilities-
Unmolassed sugar beet
Chopped grass chaff
Alfalfa
Fibre nuts

Aim to make any changes over at least 7 days. After a few weeks increase the quantities according to need for the individual horse. I wouldnt bother with the haylage balancer, it is uneccesary expense.

 

[joy]

Same as Teddyt except I would put some linseed in or Badminton oiled chaff, but keep it as simple as possible.
Over this cold snap due to reduced exercise my 6yo 7/8bred was reduced to haylage and chop/Dengie HiFi lite and we will not be going onto anything else, horses require a lot less than we think.

 

[Echo Bravo]

Winergy low energy to begin with to build her up slowly as some feeds can make them very gassy and you on the floor. People make the mistake of over feeding quikly when it should be slow.