Who feeds straights? experiences please

[lucky7]

Just introduced steam rolled barley into the TBs diet along with sugar-beet and oil.
Thought i would give the barley a try and see how she gets on over winter, she is prone to drop weight as the weather gets cooler. She has has barley rings in the past and never heated up on them or gotton silly or come out in lumps.

Started with a very small childs size mug and aiming to bring it to 2 full size mugs between 2 feeds per day (mug per feed) over the next 10 days.

Its mega cheap at only £6 for a HUGE sack, twice the size of the d&h barley ring sack!
The sugarbeet was cheap at £5 a bag too!!
As for the oil, £1.50 for a litre of sunflower oil from the supermarket.

She will still have her joint supplement and usual carrots

Who else feeds straights and what are your reasons for doing so?

 

[Foxhunter49]

I feed straights. I was brought up feeding this way and then for convenience and because it looked tasty I turned to mixed feeds, did that for about four years and regretted it all the way.
Horses were silly with it and the youngsters got all sorts of joint/growth problems.

 

[marmalade76]

I feed straights. I have been tempted to try new things at different times but found that things often didn't live up to the advertised claims and just cost me more money. The only thing I feed that is not really classed as a straight is cubes (ATM basic high fibre cubes, have fed conditiong and Stay Power in the past), but they have been about for as long as I can remember.

I like feeding straingts 'cause they work, they're cheap, there's no rubbish in them and I know exactly what my horse is getting.

 

[Miss L Toe]

I feed micronised linseed meal from Charnwood Milling, more fibre and cheaper than oil.
The only problem with the steamed barley is that it will not stay fresh for too long, I would try to find a drier, micronised product.
I know sb nuts are popular but micronised beet has more nutrients.

 

[sbloom]

I fed straights when I had a horse but never cereals. Even if horses seem to do okay on them they can't utilise all the calories in them as they are not designed to digest starch, and some of that starch will trickle to the hind gut. In some horses it may not cause symptoms but that doesn't meant that it's not happening, or that its okay for it to happen.

There are so many other choices in feeding now that there is little reason to feed cereals to most horses. I might make an exception for a horse who needs more pep without condition, where I might try a small quantity of oats or an oat based manufactured feed like TS Conditioning Flakes.

 

[amage]

Yup we feed all straights. Our diets are all fibre base with cereal as extra energy source for those that require it. Its cheaper, horses look better and we know exactly what is going in to them and have the diets tuned up so that we can add in or pull back the starch as required depending on where in its programme the horse is eg coming up to a race or not