I'm so tired of this battle! Feed suggestions?

You should not feed more than 2 lbs of rice bran a day. It is 40% fat and a horse cannot metabolize more than 2 lbs of rice bran effectively. Make sure the rice bran you get is "stabilized" as well. It can go rancid. Stabilized rice bran has added preservatives to make sure it doesn't.

Rice bran is just a fat supplement, to be used with your feed. It has almost no nutritional value aside from the fat content.

Cool Calories is a dehydrated fat supplement. It's basically powdered vegetable oil.

Believe it or not, we're not allowed to SAY how much hay our horses get. They have determined, apparently, that if they feed them anymore then they do now, it gets wasted. I have asked several times to give her more hay, and they claim she doesn't eat it. And they're upping our board rates for February! :roll: God I need my own place already.

I usually buy Front Runner, they have a wide range of complete feed products much like what you'd get in the US (senior, pleasure, etc.) One scoop is approximately 3 pounds, so she gets either 3 pounds or 4.5 pounds per feeding because the wonderful staff doesn't have the ability to do any form of math beyond SCOOP. *sighs* But that's a good point, a scoop and a half of Cool Command twice a day would pump 9 pounds into her.

Thanks, I think I'll see about the rice bran first as it seems it would be more effective with a lesser, cheaper amount. She's going to bankrupt me if she keeps this up!

If you do the rice bran, 1 cup is usuallyabout 1 lb, so she should get 1 cup per-feeding. 1 measuring cup that is.

My only other idea would be to add a digestive aid to her diet, like Fastrack or similar probiotic. Something to make sure she's digesting all of the money you're pouring down her throat .

Does she pace in her stall? Pacing can burn a lot of calories. Getting a stall toy or making one can help with that.

Good luck!!

She's pretty good in her stall, though the sweet feed is making her antsy. If they're late in the morning, she'll make a pretty good ruckus but she spends most of her night laying down!

Thanks a ton for the advice!

We have a hard keeper as well. We feed him a full scoop of beet pulp(soaked) and a full scoop of low protein sweet feed. We also give it to our other horses. They only get this four times a week. He has put on the weight that he needs just fine. They don't seem to get antsy either.

If your horse is in with other horses, there may be another horse that is keeping yours away from the free choice hay. So he wouldn't get to eat when outside. Spend some time one day and watch your horse to see if that is happening. If that's the case, discuss with the barn manager what options are available, like a second bale, or putting him in another pen.

Thanks usandpets. She's in with 6 other horses but they do seem to share just fine. I'm out almost daily, and every time I show up, all 7 have their heads buried in the feeder. They're pretty used to sharing, plus Jynx is "besties" with the second in command mare so I think that helps her cause. I'm confident she's stuffing her face for most of the day!

OK Front Runner 30% supplement... then add 1lb of rice bran per feedinga dn about 3lbs of alfalfa pellets ... they are fine when given dry no problems at all


What I see is alot of calories but NOT balanced nutrition I can not stress enough the advantages of a BALANCED diet.

Just bag it up yourself... I use gallon ziplock baggies and put the feed in that when I go out of town... get 14 bowls or baggies and make it up and store it at barn ... that way YOU are mixing it the way you want all they have to do is dump it to her

Any new ideas?

I just called three different feed places, one of which is an actual manufacturer of grain and NOBODY carries rice bran - only regular bran.

And apparently even the places that sell Feed-Rite DON'T stock the Feed-Rite 30% Supplement. I want to bang my head against a dang wall! God I hate this backwards hick no-nothing about horses province!