feeding the performance horse

pat · feeding the performance horse

I started this thread at Caroline's suggestion when I asked Terry for his views on sugar in feeds on her thread.

I would still love to hear his views and those of anyone else.

I saw details of what Nic fed her hunters on another thread and would be interested in what other people feed their barefoot working horses. ie actual feed beyond the B/Y, seaweed and linseed supplementation.
I would be especially keen to hear what people feed LGL horses who work hard.

My own horses range from perfect, ie 24yo arab, barefoot for 18 years who goes over anything and can eat anything to my LGL Haflinger, off grass all the time now for 3 years and for whom I struggle to find feed.
He is stabilised, booted and can do a lot of work but what to feed is a problem. Alfalfa is out and so is high sugar hay, grain is definitely out. Grass is a definite no no.
Washed sugar beet is safe and the only bagged feed I have found totally safe is Spiller hi fibre nuts.

Looking for inspiration.
Pat

sarahh

Hi Pat
I have a rock crunching cob & a slightly more sensitive Haflinger. Both are fed on Simple Systems lucie cobs & blue bag grass nuts. The cob stays pretty much rock crunching regardless, the haffie is ok so long as i add the minerals each day (lazy me sometimes doesn't bother, could get away with it at old yard with scrubby grazing but not now on dairy pasture)
I used to feed Copra meal & they did well on this too. I am thinking of going back to it, although i didn't find it kept the weight on my haffie so well as the grass nuts do (i have the worlds only skinny haffie)
Work-wise, Boy (cob) is hacking, showjumping, schooling, hunter-trialling. Tyler (haffie) does hacking, fun-rides, schooling, bit of jumping. So both fairly busy boys.
Hope this helps.
Sarah
x

vickyclink

Pat, I am feeding sugar beet with seaweed, linseed, BY and mag ox, but am thinking of trying copra.

If you wanted to try some we could go halves on a bag and i meet you at whiddon down or chagford if you are passing.

Or Jane stevens has some which she buys in bulk and she is round haldon way.. i can get you her number if you want to just go up to her place and buy a bag she often has some she can spare. Otherwise i dont mind going up there sometime and getting some as i will be getting some at some point anyway... (is that the most times anyone has said some in one sentence Embarassed

)

pat

Vicky, thanks for the offer but I beat you to it!!

On the basis of reading on here I decided to try coolstance copra and got mine from Redpost at Totnes last week. They said it was flying off the shelves like hot cakes. £16.50 a bag.

Still trying to evaluate it but I have been building it up very gradually. Good thing is they like it. I am hoping to use it to keep condition on the arab and to use as a protein source on the haflinger. Arab is doing fine on it and is relatively calm, for him. I just want to keep condition on so that he can go on for as many years as possible.
Haflinger was more complicated on it and I am not so sure if it will work. He was a bit slow after starting on the copra but this could equally be the warm weather, he was sweating and will be clipped shortly.

My haffie also gets skinnie unless I keep getting the food into him. ( I was told he was one of the taller, leaner types) He is also very sensitive to sugar, not just LGL but his behaviour in general. Even higher sugar hay turns him into a spring grass lunatic.
Pat

Terry

Pat,
have PM'd you.
Terry

pat

thanks a lot Terry, I have replied to you.
Pat

QAR

Patch is on Spillers High Fibre Cubes ( Embarassed

having just read the ingredients list today) and Dengie Alfalfa pellets plus Mag Ox and at the mo HoofMender although we're going to to try BY/linseed/seaweed when we finish this pack of HM. He's on grass about 8 hours a day and has soaked hay when he's in.

His feet are pretty good at the mo and he's happy on most surfaces but he does still feel larger stones on hard surfaces. We're on a livery yard so have to put up with turnout on pretty good grass. I'd love to have our own place and a track but that's unattainable at the minute and for the forseeable future. P is happy and sound to do all the RC activities we do and if we're going on a hack that's going to involve very rough ground then we boot.

pat

QAR

Ouch, poor Haflinger!

I agree and P is doing fine on them (although I am a bit embarrassed that I had no clue what was in them until today) He certainly didn't show any change foot wise when he moved on to them and he does love them, which is great cos he'll usually leave a bucket feed in favour of hay, which can make getting supplements in to him a bit of a nightmare.

brucea

I just wonder if there is something in what Nic mentioned - that sensitive horses can do beter on cubes rather than the dried and processed chaffs/Alfas?

cptrayes

Mmm, interesting thought Bruce. Mine are on "own brand" cubes, cheapest food you can buy, and I have never felt the need to change it. I did taste it once and there was hardly any sweetness to it. I use sugar beet with them to hold the supplements, which are difficult to mix with cubes.

I keep them off the grass from 9am to 7pm, which has made a big difference to Jazz's concavity and sensitivity compared with last summer.

I have added Brewers Yeast (instead of YeaSacc) and calcined magnesite in the last two months and his feet have lost their remaining "summer sensitivity" since doing that.

C

ps Terry can't you share your feed ideas with us all?

brucea

I wonder if it is down to maybe antifungal, mould inhibitors added to the blast dried stuff but not the cubes? Who knows....maybe Nic has some ideas.

I'm struggling wiht the summer sensitivity on my big lad too and just in the process of getting a complete review of his hooves. I have doubled his brewers yeast, magox and seaweed to help him out a bit - seems to having an effect. Like you keeping him off the grass for 12 hours a day, but that makes for a lot of poo picking with 3 of them off the grass!

Just a strange thing I have become aware of. Link used to be the head horse in any herd he was put into - woe betide anyone who challenged him - he was the boss and there was no argument! Since I changed his diet a couple of years ago he now seems to stand back from the herd and appears to no longer hold the boss geldng position - he just watches and lets other horses squable it out between them. No one messes with him or plays dominance games with him becuase he is a "no nonsense" kind of horse, but he just doesn't get into the dominance tussles and scraps these days. Maybe he's just matured up a bit - but maybe it is becuase he has lost that anxious cantankerous edge he always had. Confused

cptrayes

What an interesting thought. My cubes get mouldy quite easily, so maybe they don't have mould inhibitors in them. Also, in a cube they can hide all sorts of "rubbish", which maybe is not really "rubbish" at all, but just low "quality" sources of nutrition which are actually exactly what the horses need??? People seem to love being able to see a beautiful muesli in their horse's feed bowl but maybe it's not really what the horses would want to see?

Questions questions.

C

pat

vickyclink

pat,
Did the same thing happen with ss chaffs? Such as ruffstuff? I am sondering if i can change to this you see, instead of hifilite.. mind you maybe pone can make do with unmolassed sb instead...

dorisday

Hi Pat - when you say 'couldn't cope', what do you mean? And was it literally noticeable after one feed? Think Im going through the same thing . . .

Nic

pat

Dorisday, I meant he went footsore, ouchy. (this was simply in the yard as he was wandering around). He did exactly the same on T/S balancer.
He is a horse that cannot cope with grass, he lives yarded 24/7 and no doubt has metabolic problems although he has not been tested .

Any feeding problems reflect very quickly in his level of soundness. If he is on OK feeds he will trot fast along his stony track. On both hi fi lite and alpha A lite he was ouchy just walking slowly on smooth concrete.

On the dengie alfalfa nuts he was trotting so fast you couldn't even see his feet touch the ground he was floating so much. Very Happy

Vicky, I have never tried SS only dengie hi fi lite and dengie alpha A lite. I think speedibeet is just so much safer. Very Happy

(actually I also begrudge paying a lot of money for chopped straw )

horsesfirst

Little QH is the same. Can't tolerate any of those bagged chaffs even the supposedly laminitic safe ones (yeah right)

We used to let her hedge munch but she always picks out the sugar rich stuff, so that is now a no no and we forage for her Rolling Eyes

brucea

Well - after Mathews visit the cows are getting the greengold. Although I must say that he was far better on the Greengold than the Alfa-A so thee may be soemtign in that. But not going to take chances now

Mathew recommended "Promero Total" - have not looked that up yet - is anyone using it?

horsesfirst

No, but having looked it up on the web I can only ask 'why?'

Promises no need to feed extra supplements but it is a long way from the mix as recommended in the FF book.

brucea

Just had a look - my self-imposed rules say no because there is not a list of ingredient - only a nutritional analysis.

"Ingredients" means what it's made of - not what the analysis says!

horsesfirst

Quite - and depending how much magnesium you feed horse could end up needing to eat the best part of a sackful each day. And the balance with calcium is out (by my math any way).

Hey Brucea - check out the 'our philosophy' page. You'll love it - the product is made from grass! Very Happy

brucea

Hmm....

Wendy in France

Top Spec Top Chop and Top Chop Lite are alfalfa and alfalfa/oat straw chaffs that are made without any mollasses or preservatives. They are air dried and then given a light spray of soya oil to stop them clumping in the bags. Probably won't have the chance to try them myself, being down in SW France, but hearing your discussion on preservatives and mollasses in chaffs reminded me about these new TS products.

brucea

Well - this is taking an interesting turn in my poor overstretched brain.

Hayleys say their Greengold is simply air dried, no additives or sprays at all. Same with Liciestalks.

So - reality - he is I think reacting to the alfalfa, or it at least has a ? over it. Nic and others are telling me that horses that are sensitive to the hot air dried chaffs often do better on the pellets.

So the question I am asking myself now is - is it really antifungal, mould inhibitors? Or is is possibly that the fast air drying keeps more of the sugars and fructans in the alfalfa - and the pelleting process maybe destroys them?

Need to check out the nutritional analyses of each...maybe I'm barking up a tree that only I can see!

horsesfirst

Brucea I am fairly certain I saw some analysis/research that showed that air dried alfalfa is higher in sugar but I didn't keep a record. sorry Embarassed

Nic

brucea

What cubes do you use Nic as the base for feed?

I feel like I have a jigsaw but not the picture that tells me what it is!

Nic

All the horses here get the same, in differing amounts depending on work levels and condition:

Dengie alfalfa pellets
Crushed oats
Coolstance
Unmollassed sugarbeet
Minerals

I'd use alfalfa plus s/beet as the base, for a horse in light/moderate work. There are lots of unmollassed beets out there - Sarah was saying that Kwikbeet (which we can't get here) has the lowest overall sugar level.

N

dorisday

You can get Kwikbeet delivered to you from this link - cost in shipping so a 20kg bag works out to around £15 :

http://www.millbryhill.co.uk/eque...dodson-horrell-kwik-beet-2051.htm