Pregnant mare - what to feed?

My mare is due to foal in 3-4 weeks or so. I was hoping she wasn't pregnant, but it's been obvious for a while, now. I've been feeding her all the grass and grass hay she wants, along with alfalfa pellets. (We aren't much on grain - we added beet pulp during the winter months).

Dancer looks good - though her belly dropped so her spine is showing (not sticking up like a razor, but you can see it. I don't know anything about pregnancy - but I would like to add a little weight to her - I think. Also - what should she really be fed?

I'm heading to the feed store this a.m. - any suggestions would be appreciated...

BTW - I am NOT happy she's pregnant - that was !!%#! Son-in-law's idea - he thought it would be kewt!

Try Nutrena Life Design Mare and foal.

Thanks. My local feed store doesn't sell Nutrena. They sell Shawnee Mills feeds. They recommended one called "paddock" for pregnant/nursing mares. Don't know a whole lot about it other than it's a 14% protein and the girl that recommended it feeds it to her broodmares all the time.

I prefer not to grain my horses - haven't had a lot of luck with it recently - no matter how much sweet feed/oats/corn I added to their diet, they lost weight and got hyper. Decided to stick to the alfalfa pellets and soaked beet pulp. The horses settled back down and started gaining weight again.

I'm going to watch the mare and see how she does adding the "Paddock" to her feed. She sure seems to like it for some reason. I didn't see any molasses in the ingredients, but she's such a chow hound that may not mean anything...

Instead of grain, I would add in a vit/min supplement, one for mares in foal if you can find one, and a fat source. For fat, look for something like stabilized rice bran, Omega Horseshine (flax meal), rice bran oil, or fortified wheat germ oil. Start with 1/2 cup of whatever fat source you choose. After a few days, go up to 1 cup. If you're feeding the flax meal, you can go up to 2 cups.

I'm not a fan of feeding grain either. I use ADM's StaySTRONG Mineral Pellets. It is lower in protein than ration balancers, but provides 100% or more of required vitamins and minerals a horse needs. I feed it to all 6 of my horses and they do really well on it. If you don't have a dealer in your area, you can order it online.
StaySTRONG low starch mineral feed supplement

I also feed grass hay and alfalfa pellets for horses that need more calories. The StaySTRONG mineral pellets compliment that kind of diet well.

Did she end up foaling yet??? I'm feeding my Grulla mare Buckeye Growth right now in her early stages of pregnancy. She will stay on it until the baby is weaned and then the baby will stay on it until she is 2 years old. I would never give a horse any type of sweet feed. Buckeye is low starch/low sugar blend with no unknown ingredients like brands such as Purina and Nutrena where as it says on the back Grain by products.

Sorry, I missed your post Mliponoga - Yeah - Dancer foaled 06/28/10 - She had a gorgeous little bay filly. I think she's bay - she seems to be trying to change color on us...