Equine Nutrition Guru's - I need you

I see that they have a new product out, made by Purina and I wanted to get the 411 on it.

It is called Puina Strategy, Healthy Edge and it looks quite interesting. The last time I was at the Feed Store, I saw the pamphlet and grabbed it.

Right now, my 21 year old fellow is doing very well on 3lbs of Purina Senior and 2lbs of Purina Ultium per feeding, twice a day. But, the Ultium is killing me cost wise at $20.66 per bag.

What I am wondering, is would this new product be a good alternative from the Ultium? Or just keep going with what works?

You could try Nutrena Equine Senior....I use that on my 22-yr old gelding and it's very good. I'll let the nutrition gurus tell you about that new product as I haven't heard of it, I've just heard of the regular Strategy feed.

Well, instead of the Ultium you could use a combination of beet pulp, alfalfa pellets, and flax meal. You'd need 1 lb of beet pulp, 1 lb of alfalfa pellets, and 1 cup of flax. That should provide all of the extra calories, protein, fat, and nutrition that the ultium provides, and it should work out to be cheaper. Alfalfa pellets cost me about $13 for a 40 lb bag and beet pulp is about $12 for a 50 lb bag at my local tractor supply. One bag of each will last more than a month, so you're looking at $18 a month for those two ingredients.

Horsetech.com has a good product called NutraFlax. Their prices include shipping. You can even have them custom blend any extra goodies you might need in it, like joint supplements, pro/pre-biotics, yeast cultures, etc. If you buy just the NutraFlax, in a 20 lb bucket, you're looking at a $16.50 a month cost. You could get whole flax ordered from your local feed store for even less.

All that said, looking at the feeding recommendations of Equine Senior, you're not feeding enough of it. For a 1,000 lb horse in light work, you're supposed to feed 14 lbs a day. Why not increase your Senior to 5 lbs twice daily?

Thanks for your help.

I guess I could knock out Ultium all together and just up his Senior intake twice a day.