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Help needed choosing feed

1K views 4 replies 4 participants last post by  loosie 
#1 ·
My mare will be arriving 4th November - yippee!

She will be kept stabled at night but will have 8-10 hours of grazing per day, on good pasture. The yard provides good quality hay at a fair price.

Details:

14.1 gypsy cob
12 years old
Has been kept out at grass and ridden lightly the past six months. No additional feed has been fed in this time.
Barefoot - nice feet:) She's never been shod! Regular trims though.

So, she will be kept stabled for the first while until her quarantine is over and all her jabs are up to date. That will take about a month at most, but we may have snow by then:-( That would mean hay instead of grazing.
What I'm wanting to ask is what, if any, additional feed would she need? I will be doing light riding only. Should I keep her on a purely forage diet, or switch to a combination?

I've been researching various brands and I'm getting confused so any tips would be very welcome!

I'm looking at products such as Horsehage, Mollichaff, and Spillers Cool Mix. If I am way off base here then yell at me quickly!

Thanks everyone:oops:
 
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#2 ·
For a healthy animal doing light work, grass should be sufficient.
If snow in your area prevents access to grass for several months, you may want to supplement with a multi-vitamin. That doesn't mean that you need to give a lot of grain though. I had a mustang for a few years that was such an easy keeper, we had to work to keep him from being overweight on very little food. No access to grass where he was boarded (he was turned out every day, but I live in southern AZ, and grass just doesn't grow most of the year here, so the heavily used turnouts were mostly dirt). He got Bermuda hay, and a multi-vitamin formatted to compliment Bermuda; I'd buy a pelleted grain w/ low molasses and give him (literally) just a handful of it every day w/ the vitamin powder on it.

*If* you notice your horse starting to loose weight on hay only, *then* start to look into what types of grain or other supplements you might want to feed. But otherwise I wouldn't worry about it.
 
#4 ·
Her breed in my opinion, should be a pretty easy keeper. The best thing for a horse, good quality hay. If I could do it I would, but the drought has rruinned it. No grass, my feed store haas no costal, and where I did get costal I paind 15 dollars a small square bale..crazy. Sorry about the rant. Hay and when there's no grass, maybe some supplemenets.
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#5 ·
Agree with others. Hay/grass is probably all she'll need, but I would also feed a good nutritional supplement. If you do need to feed her more, I'd stick to a 'low carb' diet & avoid molasses(molichaff), grain & other sugary/starchy feeds generally.
 
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