Which chaff?

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moodymare_1993

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Which do you find is the best chaff/feed for your overweight/ good doers / prone to lami?

I have a 15hh cob that is retired and overweight despite the lack of grass. He is currently on a handful of happy hoof unmollassed purely for supplements however I’ve been hearing some not so good things about it and wonder if there is something with better quality and with less sugar in?
Can I have your thoughts please?

He also has a handful of Bailieys no.14 lowcal balancer
 
I'm about to start mine on Agrobs Leichtgenuss - low sugar and starch, suitable for overweight/metabolic horses. They also do one called Gruenhafer, which is green oat chaff and even lower in sugar and starch. I like the Leichtgenuss though because it's got a variety of plants in it.
 
I feed my fatty good-doer (with history of gastric ulcers) Pure Feeds fibre balance - It's really low calorie, low sugar, has all the vits/mins and pre/probiotics in, so you don't need a balancer. Call them at Pure Feeds and have a chat, they are really helpful and will tell you which feed and quantities to use.
 
For chaff, I use Dengie Hi -fi lite. It is approved by the Laminitus trust.

This combined with Baileys lo-cal balancer.
 
I use Dengie Hi-Fi molasses free for my lami-prone Welsh cob. It has fenugreek and mint (I think) and little pellets to make it interesting. I ordered a free sample of Honeychop chopped oat straw from their website and they sent me four sample bags of the stuff! I mixed it half-and-half with the molasses free and he scoffed the lot. Think I might buy a bag over the winter and half and half it when the grazing gets particularly poor.
 
L&M said:
For chaff, I use Dengie Hi -fi lite. It is approved by the Laminitus trust.

This combined with Baileys lo-cal balancer.
Click to expand...

But HiFi lite still has molasses in it so does Bailey's low cal neither are great for laminitis prone horses, you would be best to feed the molasses free version.
 
moodymare_1993 said:
Which do you find is the best chaff/feed for your overweight/ good doers / prone to lami?

I have a 15hh cob that is retired and overweight despite the lack of grass. He is currently on a handful of happy hoof unmollassed purely for supplements however I’ve been hearing some not so good things about it and wonder if there is something with better quality and with less sugar in?
Can I have your thoughts please?

He also has a handful of Bailieys no.14 lowcal balancer
Click to expand...
I use D&H Fibergy - palatable and has been safe on mine, he is prone to Laminitis but I watch his grazing as the first grass growth is what starts his, so limiting grazing and just 1/2 scoop and h/f nuts and he also gets Milk thistle which is good for laminitis along with lami free.
 
I've just changed to Honeychop Lite & Healthy and I really rate it.

Previously mine would never have eaten anything that didn't come with at least a light coating of molasses but they absolutely love this stuff. It smells nice due to the herbs and even has the odd dandelion mixed in.
 
If you're really only feeding a handful, it doesn't matter much what chaff you pick. The calories in a handful of chaff (no matter which type) are negligible in the grand scheme of things (i.e. daily calorie requirement), so unless there are special considerations or intolerances, anything that he'll eat will be fine. The Happy Hoof molasses free is already pretty low sugar (2%). You'll struggle to go much lower than that with alternatives. Most "straight" grass chaffs with nothing added will be closer to 8-10% sugar. The only way to go really low is to incorporate more straw in the chaff, but without some sort of coating/flavouring a lot of horses won't actually eat plain straw chaff, or at least not when supplements are added.
I think you're probably fine with the HH molasses free. If your horse is still struggling to lose/maintain weight, I'd take another look at forage intake (weight hay, be realistic about grass intake even if it looks like there's "nothing" in the field, count droppings...).
 
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