Opinions, please

All hose feed should be fed by weight and not scoops. I also recommend dicthing the sweet feed. Just because someone has done it for years we now have the scientific data that it is not good for the horses.

How much hay (weight wise) are they getting? Personally I prefer to have free choice hay if possible and then supplement as need as a horse needs it.

I grow weary of the folks that say

Quote:

always done sweet feed for the last 30+ years and has never had a diabetic horse; has not had anyone founder, and were perfectly fine and healthy.

I can be sassy about saying that becaussss, I have been paying for my own horses for 54 years, so I've got her beat in the horse management department

Believe me, I do NOT have anywhere near all the answers I need but I will say this:

I fed sweet feed for 10 - 12 of those years. I was a pretty hard trail rider; light riding thru the week, after I got home from work and my son didn't have to be somewhere, hard riding on the weekends.

When I moved to SoCal, the fella that owned the local feed store had race horses. This was before internet and horse forums, and I was bemoaning the fact that I really didn't like putting all that sweet feed into my horses.

He looked at me and quietly said, "it is junk - nothing but junk". After I recovered from his sales person pitch against sweet feed, I asked "well, what?" He pointed me toward a new feed Nutrena had just rolled out.

That was around 2001 and I can't remember what it was by now but I made the change.

My point to that story is, if the feed store owner who sells the stuff says it's nothing but junk, what is wrong with that picture?

I am truly happy for the BO who has fed sweet feed for 30 years but much has changed since then. Ma Bell is almost unknown except for the one lane road I live on and we ditched her for cell phones

Seat belts and helmet laws weren't around 30 years ago but they are now.

If your friend goes to the cdc website, it will tell her that childhood obesity has tripled in the last 30 years (there's that magic number she wants to use on you). CDC - Obesity - Facts - Adolescent and School Health

I am sorry that I can't stand square in front of her and tell her to get her head out of the 80's and get with today's equine feeding program. Sooner or later "what worked then, is going to stop working now" and she's going to find herself dealing with a Type II diabetic horse, wondering why it foundered when Spring grass comes on

There are others, in tune to equine nutrition on this forum, that write much better than I and are great at getting the point across in less words than me.

Hopefully they will add their two cents to help with your line of defense

As far as generic web sites, I know there's an old thread (like a couple years back) on this forum that talks about feeds and the percent NSC in them.

If you buy a good quality ration balancer, as a rule, it only takes one pound daily for the horse to have all it's nutritional needs. More can be added but instructions are always on the bag.

Rice bran and beet pulp are safe and good fat additives without adding the hot that sweet feed might.

Once the horse has put the weight back on, if it turns out to be an easy keeper (which might signal insulin issues but not always), the rice bran or beet pulp could be substituted with timothy pellets which are nothing more than extruded timothy hay

This is YOUR horse, I sincerely hope the BO sees things your way; she can walk to the house complaining and beatching all she wants but it's your horse and if you provide the feed and the garbage can to keep it in, what in Thee Samhill is the big deal to her?

I better get off my sort-of venting soapbox - I'm still back on the "I've had horses for 30 years thing" lollollol

That is another difference. When they are home, hay is free choice. There, they get 2 pads at each feeding and a pile when turned out. {Emaciated horse, of course, always has hay} There have been days when they can get to the round bale {we've got two that are weaning} and get what they want. They have never run out of hay when turned out.

I have no idea how much the pads weigh.....
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This falls in the category of 'when we know better, we do better. ' ;) The emaciated QH is being fed a bit differently than my other two there, and completely differently than my two Saddlebreds at home.

So, what are you feeding, and how much? I really need to find a good pound to quart conversion..... thanks! :)
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Regarding pound-to-quart conversion, this is the best explanation I could find: How many quarts are in a pound? Both dry measure? - Yahoo! Answers

That being said, it is best to measure in pounds. I use dry measure household measuring cups for everything that goes into the feed pans.

I have two horses with metabolic issues, a third horse that is oat/corn/soy intolerant and 4th horse that is coming 27 and a very hard keeper; feeding has gotten complicated

1) I feed the 27 yr old 1 lb daily of Triple Crown Senior; 1-1/2 lbs daily of pelleted equine rice bran; 1lb daily of alfalfa pellets; 1 lb daily of timothy pellets; 3/4 cup daily Omega-3 Horseshine. I mix everything with water because he has four missing molars. Plus all the grass hay he wants.

2) The 25 yr old with Equine Metabolic Syndrome also has hind gut ulcers so he can't eat too much at one sitting. He gets nothing but rice bran (3-3/4 lbs daily); a liquid vit/min supplement that only requires one ounce daily; 1 cup Omega-3 Horseshine; 1lb well soaked timothy/alfalfa cubes daily; 1 lb timothy cubes daily. Plus all the grass hay he wants because he is not a horse to over stuff himself, in spite of the EMS.

3) The oat/corn/soy intolerant horse gets 1 lb of McCauley's soy-free M-10 Balancer daily
McCauley'sŪ M10 Balancer ; one cup daily Omega-3 Horseshine; 1-1/2 lbs daily timothy pellets, and all the grass hay he wants.

4) The 17 yr old with true insulin resistance also eats 1 lb daily of the McCauley's
M-10 Balancer; 1-1/2 pounds daily of timothy pellets; 12 pounds of hay at night.

My horses are all out during the day. For the first time ever, we still have enough green grass, they won't eat hay if I throw it out. That's mostly why I make sure they have more hay than I would normally feed, when they come in at night.

Horses are forage animals. I only feed them enough stuff in their feed pans to make sure they get enough nutrients.

My horses have ended up being Special Needs and it's why I really didn't want to tell you what they eat because they all eat different. My vet even commented I am past the point of feeding them all the same

There are a lot of quality Ration Balancers on the market that would work for your horse. My preference for brand is Triple Crown because they list their ingredients and their guaranteed analysis really is fixed.

I can't speak to McCauley's except for the M-10 Balancer which is only one of two soy-free products on the market, to my knowledge. I've only been using it for three months so it's too soon to tell in terms of hoof and coat quality. I know my oat/corn/soy-intolerant horse is really quiet and well-mannered and his coat shines, so that's all good

The IR horse that is eating the M-10 balancer is a lot more feisty. I started him on prescription herbs for his insulin at the same time I started the M-10, so I'm blaming his feistiness on the herbs, even though I could be wrong

I love what the TC Senior does for my 27 yr old. The Little Curmudgeon's Arab-Bay coat just glistens under the barn lights and his hooves are also shiney.

I hope someone that has a much simpler feeding regimen will come in and give you something less complicated to mull over

You can't use those charts to figure out horse feed. You can take a quart of two different feeds and they can weigh different amounts.

Lol. :) I will be surprised if they all end up eating the same thing.

I am basically limited to Tractor Supply. There are surprisingly few feed options here. I have a feed dealer who will deliver, but I don't have a written product list from him. He's also bound by his distributer.

The Saddlebreds did quite well with basically no hay and foraging only, since they were completely abandoned for at least 3 years.

I think I'm going to have to keep picking away at this. Thanks again for your input!!
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What are you feeding and how much?
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I don't do anything more than free choice hay, salt and minerals.

When I have had to supplement feeding to bring weight up for whatever reason, I would/was use either Strategy or Strategy Healthy Edge.

These are only two of my five and you can see they aren't skinny.



The herd -



The above pic were all taken within the last couple of weeks.

NICE! Do you work them or ride at all?
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