Nutrena Brand Safe Choice

I am bringing my horse home this weekend and he is pretty thin. I have been doing some research on what to feed him that will add some weight but not make him "hot" On the advice of several local horse people and my feed store I am leaning towards feeding him the Safe Choice feed. My question is does anyone have experience with this, and did your horses do well on it? My other question which might seem rather dumb but I need imput never the less is how much do you feed? I am going to say my horse is about 1000 lbs (I will get a more accurate measurement after getting him home). He will have free choice hay, water and salt. From the website it looks like I would feed him .50 to .75 lbs per 100 lbs body weight of the horse. That would equal out about 5 to 7.5 lbs of grain a day wouldn't it? Is that right?

Safe Choice is pretty good stuff. I am currently using Triple Crown Low Starch as my base feed and adding in extras for weight gain on my kinda sorta hard keeper. He has picked up weight without really changing his demeanor at all. I do 4# Low Starch with 1# beet pulp (weight gain) 1# ground flax (weight gain/coat/hoof) 1# Rice bran (weight gain/coat/hoof) and .5# Sunflower seed for coat and extra calories...plus, he loves them...

Any good, low starch complete grain is going to be a good choice. I had to add in extras because my boy was a little more than just ribby.

Sunny is on SafeChoice and she is doing well on it. I changed her to it when she dropped weight last year, and she put on nicely.
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Yep, it's pretty good stuff.. My mare gets Safe Choice and has done really well on it. To help with the weight try beet pulp mixed in his feed. It won't make him hot and you can feed it many different ways. I usually use the shreads and soak them before mixing it in feed..it's cheap too so that's always a plus..

Iv used safe choice before didnt like it my horses looked horrible on it lost weight was feeding more then recommended. Plus my mare did nothing but colic on it. Iam now feeding triple crown 30% plus one pound beet pulp rice brand and flax they look great. I don't have to feed 5-7 pounds to meet there requirements I feed only 1 1/2 pounds a day. Iam not a purina fan and don't like their feeds wont feed my horses anything purina brand.Triple crown is a much better feed and you don't need to feed alot which is better for the horse.

Safechoice is not truly a low NSC feed. It is an average NSC feed. (Which though some will tell that is not good, it is most certainly not a bad thing.)

I feed Safechoice. It is a perfectly fine feed for the majority of horses.

Thank you for all your replies. I don't really have a lot of choices at my one and only feed store. I have a choice of oats, whole or crushed, sweet feed, senior feed, some type of foal creep feed, Safe Choice and Unbeetable. A lot of people around here feed their horses dairy ration but I am told that is risky because there is a chance of it becoming contaminated with the medicated dairy ratioon. I have fed the sweet feed before and my horses loved it but I was just feeding it as a treat. I am told that too much sugar is not good for them. So the Safe Choice seems to be my best option. How much do you think I should start out with and how slowly should I increase it to the 5-7 lb amount. That is per day right? Not per feeding? I was also thinking of adding a little vegetable oil to the feed, is this a good idea or not?

Oh wow, Yeah, if that is all you have to pick from I would go with the Safe Choice..I would also get the beet pulp if you can. Your feed store can't order feed for you? I know our's can but you might have to buy more than one or two bags at the time.If your feed store sells Safe Choice they should have a license to sell all Nutrena feeds. If they do and can order it for you, you can also look to different Nutrena feeds besides Safe Choice if it doesn't work out for you, even though it has really worked for both of my horses. Using an oil in their feed can be good for some horses but I would only use an Omega3 oil. I used Dumor Rice Bran oil with Nikki for a while and had good results but there are many brands of it..I think fish oil is actually really good for horses..Just a thought..

And Safe Choice isn't Purina feed..It's Nutrena..

This can tell you alot more about the feed.. Nutrena: Products - Horses - SafeChoice

But the absolute BEST way to keep a horses' weight right is a really good quailty hay. If you don't have nice hay than it doesn't matter how much feed you feed..

The ONLY Nutrena feed I didn't like was Vitality..I have barrel horses and they went NUTS on the stuff..They quickly came off of that feed..

SafeChoice is an excellent feed for the majority of horses. However not all horses are equal. We feed SafeChoice as a base. One horse gets a supplement of a cup of Empower a day to maintain her weight (on allergy type meds). A filly that had a severe medical episode and lost a good deal of weight in a short period of time we are feeding Safe Choice, Senior and youth in appropriate amounts. The filly is the first horse we have had that didn't like the Empower.