I agree with what has been said above. Source and feed as much quality hay as possible, ration balancer and joint supplement. My personal favorite RB is Triple Crown 30. If she needs more calories beyond that, alfalfa hay in bales are likely your least expensive bet. If you have a mill in your area that produces alfalfa pellets, they’re often much cheaper than buying at the feed store.
What textured unfortified basic feeds are out there? Even the junkiest of sweet mixes are doused in vitamins, and I don’t want to throw off the balance.
Can you get Haystacks Special Blend pellets? It’s readily available here in the PNW, but I’m not sure about MT. It’s an alfalfa/timothy/beet pulp/rice bran/flax pellet - NON-fortified. It’s very soft and soaks in no time. A little goes a long way in my experience.
Just gonna agree with everyone else. Vet is the most important right now. Vet/chiro in one person would be great, but can be difficult to find.
On ration balancers: they appear expensive, but you feed so much less that they really aren’t. Also would stress the need for Vitamin E, possibly more than what’s in the ration balancer, since she’s not getting much, if any, fresh grass. But keep the feed/supplement routine simple!
Yeah, this doesn’t sound like a nutrition problem. Nothing in your post suggests that your horse warrants the kind of DIY feed program you are trying to concoct. Trust me, as someone who has dealt with a horse with a serious feed allergy, it sucks to try to do what the feed companies do on your own. It’s also a boat load of guess work if you don’t have current hay testing. I lived on Feed XL, and weighed everything.
Just in case you need to hear this, you are not a better horse owner if you concoct a crazy feed program or put your horse on 12 supplements.
As others have said, 2 lbs. a day of a good ration balancer like Triple Crown should do fine. My first priority in terms of supplement would be 5,000 iu of natural Vitamin E, since the horse isn’t getting fresh grass and muscle wastage in the hind end may be neurological.
I’d stop there and put the rest towards a vet exam and some diagnostics to figure out what is actually wrong with the horse.
If you want to spend more money, there is nothing wrong with MSM, HA, Cosequin, etc.
After school are you going into a career involving writing?
Honestly if your mare holds her weight well on her grass/ alfalfa hay then all you need is a good ration balancer ( fed per bag instructions) and that should carry the MSM just fine. Timothy pellets are an unneeded expense as she is on good hay already.
The only unfortified feed would be whole grains ( corn, oats, bean meal etc…) bought by the bag at a local feed mill that you mix together yourself and then you can add a mineral mix of your choice and other things . While this is cheaper it is not for everyone and you need a lot of barrels to hold all your different ingredients etc…
I feed MSM and after the first weeks loading dose it needs to be fed daily to be beneficial. I have heard that oral joint supplements really don’t do squat except to make the owner feel like they are doing something?
Get her vet diagnosed and then see what you have before throwing stuff at her.
Another chime for find a good soundness vet and do the workup. I don’t love “chiropractors” per se but various kinds of body workers sell their services under a variety of labels. I prefer someone who has experience with massage and PT type muscle therapy work, and ideally some human experience, because the human side comes with better feedback and better training. Someone like this can have a very good eye for what muscle groups are not working correctly, work through muscle adhesions and tension, and they can suggest some good ridden exercises as well as give you the tools to do some of your own massage and stretch work. These people, the good ones, are hard to find in pretty much any location and I’m not sure you’d find one in Montana, but I’d keep your ear open for one.
As for the feed, as everyone says, you are overcomplicating. IME: the biggest expense for any feed that gets to the consumer is the cost of shipping it in 50 lb bags to where you are. Thus, for a pretty similar price, you can get plain timothy pellets (does any horse like these?), beet pulp, oats, or… you can get a balanced feed designed for equines. I actually can get LMF Senior for less than a bag of oats. With the LMF I get someone doing quality control and nutritional testing specifically for horses, and I get the vitamins balanced to what the raw ingredients contained.
Pick one or at most two products that fit together and meet your needs for this horse and stop there.
And agree you’re not going to fix the lameness with feed. A good feed could support healing, if that’s still possible for her, but it won’t initiate anything.
Yep, I am a bit of a nutritional junkie. I love looking a diets and balancing them. What I can tell you is no matter how hard you try you will not be able to produce a balanced diet on your own for one horse at a reasonable price point. Try and you will end up with a hideously complicated feeding routine, wasted ingredients and in all probability a nutrional imbalance.
You are far better off using a ration balancer or pre made commercial feed as a base. Plus textured feed requires feed to be coated in either syrup or oil, then a mold inhibitor is required to keep it stable.
There are so many great companies out there that have already done the work. Do the research, find the product that is textured, low NSC, suited to you horses age and work load. Between Triple Crown, Purina, Nutrena, Spiller’s Seminole and so many more you can find a product that will do the main job, tastes great and will be reasonably priced.
I know we are coming to believe that Commercial based feeds are full of chemicals and crap. This is simply not true. We are lead to believe that forage based natural diets are perfect for our horses. That is somewhat true. If we are lucky enough for our horses to live on perfect pasture with no chance of laminitis. Sadly many forage based diets are deficient because of the lack of batch testing on individual samples. No matter how well designed, forage samples vary wildly.
I can tell you that anything put in a bag, pelleted, cubed, extruded or compression baled has been treated, sprayed or heat dried. Make your life simple, find a good ration balancer or feed and then add some yummy carrots, apples or non veggie oil.
Good for you, all of this means you 
your horse!
I spent an entire semester in college (Texas A&M, so no slouch in this department) learning how to balance rations for all matter of livestock. On the last day of class, the prof told us, “Forget everything you just learned and go buy Purina feeds formulated for whatever you’re feeding. They’ve done all the hard work so you don’t have to.”
I think we may have been in the same class. 
Wouldn’t that be cool? One of my classmates actually went on to get her master’s (possibly doctorate, I don’t remember for sure, but definitely advanced degree) in Equine Nutrition, and guess who she went to work for?
Sure you can 
Whether it’s complicated or not, expensive or not, depends largely on the calorie needs. Pound for pound, commercial feeds have more calories than almost any single ingredient you could/would want to feed in any significant amount. The more calories you need to make up, the less likely you can do it more cheaply. The more nutrients you need to add, the less likely as well.
If you can do some basic math, or pay a good nutritionist or use a FeedXL subscription, you can do all the right balancing.
In this case I 100% agree!
Textured doesn’t mean coated. COB is considered textured, regardless of added molasses or oil. Textured just means the bulk of the ingredients are in loose form, so you see the oats, or the beet pulp, in their whole parts.
Yes! I don’t know why people have come to equate commercial with crap and chemicals. Wait, I do - they’re getting the idea that the ONLY way to feed is to feed individual ingredients that are “whole” and “natural”, which is hysterical when they turn around and feed alfalfa pellets and oats 
And the “forage based natural diet” is…not funny. If they’re eating hay and grass they are already eating a forage-based natural diet. I’ve seen some horses on a home-made “forage-based” diet who look terrible either because it’s not enough calories, or it’s so badly balanced 
Many of those people, IME, love to point to the study done on STBs who were fed only hay and who maintained good weight during training. They fail to understand the parts that 1) it was really high quality hay, and 2) they still supplemented the diets for missing or deficient nutrients.
Don’t go formulating a diet with a 1st grade education on nutrition.
On some level I agree.
But on another, if you’re aiming for optimal health, you still want to be able to look at the whole diet and see what’s missing or unbalanced. I’ve got an Ag Agent friend who does exactly this - balances diet for horses and ruminants with commercial feeds in the mix, and gets things up to where they should be based on the forage.
Of course! But you start with a formulated ration, created by professionals, and go from there. No starting from scratch was all I meant.
Where I live we only have access to feed from local two mills, none of the American brands are distributed here. One mill makes more modern formulas with lower NSC and fixed ingredients. The other mill makes more traditional formulas with unfixed ingredients, more cereal grains, and higher NSC. So IMHO we really have only one feed company here :).
I do buy an extruded kibble from the old fashioned mill for clicker treats because it is a nice size for treats and doesn’t crumble. But I wouldn’t feed it at 5 lbs a day!
We are however in a big port city that’s a national grain terminal.
We have no really good ration balancer. Also, the “raw” feeds are significantly cheaper than the bagged formula feeds. A bag of oats is about $10 and a bag of any of the formula feeds is at least $20.
So that’s why I essentially make my own ration balancer, which is a good vitamin mineral supplement plus flax in a beet pulp and alfalfa cube mash. The most expensive component is the VMS. The flax, beet pulp and alfalfa cubes total less than $10 a month at the rate I typically feed my air fern. I do feed more cubes in the winter to get more water into her.
Anyhow I’m a huge believer in getting the daily vitamin and especially minerals into a horse, with the lowest possible NSC. I seem to end up looking after easy keepers, but even the time I was caretaking an anorexic OTTB, it worked to do 24/7 Timothy, alfalfa hay, and the VMS mash.
If you had a really comprehensive ration balancer in your market that would do the job. But I have come to like my system because I can keep the VMS constant and vary the amount of beet pulp, alfalfa cubes, and even add whole oats if I think the horse needs them.
However, I draw the line at trying to formulate my own VMS! I wouldn’t even try.
My point was
My point was to say this is expensive for one horse, it is possible, just can be confusing without a Nutritionist or a Nutrition Program with a limited budget and in seemingly limited storage space. I have done custom feed to great success with a barn full of horses. I can say I have seen it go wrong more than a few times in the OP posters scenario. Not that she could not do it, just diverting from a commercial balanced ration increases the chances significantly. I agree with the other posters that available funds should be spent on a definitive diagnosis instead of a complicated and specialized diet that includes supplements that may or may not work.
My bad, generally uncoated textured feed will develop dust and in commercial feeds most are coated in order to prolong shelf life and cut down on dust. You are correct, I did not finish my though here.
Forage based diets has become an overused word…just like organic. My guys eat forage based, they get low NSC, little to no sugar. They eat grass hay, all they can drag out of the slow feed nets. They get sugar free beet pulp and ration balancer or feed upon need. My EPSM guy gets fat supplemented ( designed by U of M) my new guy is “filling his bones” on full blast nutrition, since his diet was so lacking in his previous home. I feed 4 different feeds from 3 different manufacturers to six horses. One of my neighbors only feeds forage based organic, It makes me crazy, her horses are literally eating dirt, chewing down her barn and have hair coats like straw. The vet is out constantly, told her to supplement with selenium and that her foals cal/ phos ratio is WAY off. Crooked leg and stunted. It is not her feeding program, the sire was a dud. She actually told me it was a miracle my horses were still alive because of all the poison I feed them…She said this as I was grooming my old 22 y/o TB, with his coat like dappled glass. He eats hay, ration balancer, beet pulp and BOSS.
Yep, went to same class…
Maybe in my late night reply, This what I was trying to get across and failed. For some horses one commercial feed is a silver bullet. The problem is that feeds are not formulated for each individual area of the country. My feed needs in NY were different from my needs in AL and again different for SC. I start with a Nutritional value test on my hay, random samples from numerous bales. ( Big shout out to Cooperative Extension) Once I have that I can either sit down, do some math, look at feed tags and come up with a balanced ration. This is not by any means saying it will work. Every horse is an individual, a little less protein here, a little more fat there, this one hates alfalfa, that one gets hives on wheat bran. Once you have the formulation you have to tweak until get them looking “right” It takes time, watching your horse, knowing your horse. I have used the services of several nutritionists, been exceptionally pleased with results. I can say that most will tell you “start with this” and it almost always consists of a commercial premix with supplementation in few key areas depending on geographical area or horse health issues. None of the diets worked perfectly, we had to do a little tweaking to get it just right.
Some feeds ARE formulated for areas of the country. LMF is a West Coast deal, with NW and SW specs. Poulin is NE. Purina and Nutrena have some region-specific formulas - Strategy has at least 2 different labels that I’ve seen, and Nutrena has at least one very specific formula not even on their website. McCauley’s is also pretty regional.
And then yes, there are more national brands
That said, even the regional formulas are not perfect for all forages in that region, but LMF is a better starting point for Arizona than Poulin is.
Hi again everyone! Thank you all for your wonderful input. I truly value each and every one of you. Sorry for the long silence – promise you all didn’t scare me off! Thanksgiving, Black Friday, etcetera, etcetera. I hope you all had a wonderful Turkey Day! Here’s my novel number two!
An important update: I heeded your advice and called the vet the very next day. I was very lucky that he was able to come out that Tuesday! Historically he’s been two weeks out. Planets aligned! He did a pretty comprehensive lameness exam, and, unfortunately, the news was both not optimistic AND very unclear. To directly quote the vet’s invoice:
Exam: Grade 3/5 lameness RH with positive distal limb flexion; R tuber sacrale palpates shifted ventrally; no improvement to RH low 4 point block;
DDx: RH lameness possibly due to pelvic or hip injuries but hock and stifle has not been fully ruled out.
Plan: Recommend further workup to attain accurate diagnosis; Consider treatment with equioxx or bute daily
It is her right hind (excellent information from @IPEsq about the hip hike, thank you! You were spot on!!!). Vet initially thought her lameness was localized to the lower leg (ringbone or similar issues) but a nerve block showed otherwise. I asked what future actions he would advise taking if I had all the money in the world. He said, with a laugh, that I could start by getting radiographs and ultrasounds done for a small fee of $2,000.00, and that’s only if I was okay burning money for what’ll likely be unclear results Perhaps when I win the lottery!
Hopefully he didn’t tell me the following in an effort to make me feel better, but he did say that she shows sound at the walk and is likely a horse that could spend her life giving light trail rides on the flat. He loved her disposition and described her as a sweet little horse in the invoice email. Great step up from my last horse, who in the invoice he described as having “a sour attitude making evaluation difficult” 
Goodness, me.
Basically, I’ve got me a free unsound horse – who’s heard that before?! But she’s a good unsound horse, and I know for certain I have a lot to learn on the ground and up in the saddle at a walk. I am grateful for her presence in my life, and I truly look forward to becoming a better horseman. I also hope to one day do some sort of equine therapy, and she’s a wonderful horse for that. @candyappy You’re kind! Psych degree, not writing, but god, being an english major would be fun. Just not so much for the pocketbook, I fear 
Now that horror story has began to unravel, I would like to thank you all for your advice again! My plan and notes for moving forward, thanks to all of you!:
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KEEP IT SIMPLE, STUPID!
Becoming a Walter White in the feed room doesn’t make me a better horse owner, it just makes me sort of silly! I’m going to think hard about what to do with the Free Balance – so much left, and so much desperation to not waste my already wasted money – but a ration balancer is the way to go if I do insist on being River’s almighty nutrition god. TC Ration Balancer isn’t cheap, but it has a purpose. To quote me: FEED WITH A PURPOSE. But tack a “simple” right before purpose, and a “stupid” right after 
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Keep up with the timothy pellets. The timothy pellets are good, and should not be spurned for being cheap.
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Just feed the dang store-bought sweet feed already, for heaven’s sake. I went ahead and bought a few bags. I fed River a…generous… amount of it yesterday. Both surprisingly AND unsurprisingly, she was pretty hot under saddle today. Oops. Reeeeeel it innnn. She ate it up with the timothy pellets, so I believe in its value as just being fed in small amounts to increase palatability. Hooray!
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Go all in or all out with the MSM. I’m gonna go all in. Penny pinch where it’s needed, not wanted…KISS KISS KISS! Thank you, @JB! I’m going to go ahead with the HA as well. I asked the vet about it and he gave approval, which soothed the nightmares I had the night before about wasting money on it, lol.
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I’m gonna look into Vitamin E and magnesium. I know its good for muscle soothing, especially in horses with PSSM, and I’ve been wondering about its application in non-PSSM horses. Right now with half-winter always looming and dead grass all around, Vit E sounds like a smart addition. 2IU/lb – got it!
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I’m not able to get a lot of brands of feed out here in the Big Empty, so I’m mostly constrained to TC, Purina, Nutrena, and I think Equis. I should seriously do some shopping around, though. The suggestions given sound super appealing.
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CALL A NUTRITIONIST! Humble up, cowboy. Also very good to know that services are often free. I truly appreciate the info and wake up call, @Montanas_Girl. I’m really looking forward to making a connection.
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Now, after all this, I need to think about balancing feed budget with a possible future prescription of Equioxx, which is a massive financial undertaking for lil’ ol’ me. I’ve also seen Equioxx very much not work on an old mare I had who suffered from ringbone, so I’m extra wanting to make sure it may be a good fit. I’m feeding River bute daily and monitoring how she moves with it to see if Equioxx is worth considering. If the bute doesn’t work, Equioxx definitely won’t. I fed her bute last night and some right before our ride. Perhaps the sweet feed was a decent part of it, but she was fresh and spicy and eager to go go go. Well, go go go… home. So… not going to say it was necessarily pure work ethic. I hope to take videos daily and see how she goes.
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I would love to post photos and videos in the future! It may be interesting for you all to see. Hopefully that doesn’t result in me making this thread too big of a tangent. I wish I had videoed the vet exam – darn it!
I know I keep saying thank you, but I did read and took in all of your lovely replies (even if I didn’t @ you!!), and I’m very grateful for the time and energy therein. You have all been very thoughtful and gracious. I’m happy to not be going this alone, lol. It’s time to just spend some hours with my horse and get to know her; no more trying to do solo nutritional olympics as a substitute for time spent with her.
As I said, it is time to work on my horsemanship – on the ground, in the saddle, AND in the shopping cart, hahaha! I cannot begin to describe what a weird mixture of green and experienced I am at this point. Lots of potholes in my horsey education. Looking forward to filling them in.
First, I just gotta keep reminding myself:
K.I.S.S.!!!
Happy holidays, all! 
As far as the cost of Equioxx goes, my vet gives me Previcox (for dogs) instead. I give 1/4 tablet (teeny tiny I know, but that’s how it works in horses) and one bottle @ $175.00, give or take (I don’t have exact amount in front of me) lasts me nearly a year. So a little steep up front, but lasts forever. I hide her tiny bit of pill in a quarter of an oatmeal cream pie cookie (shove it into the cream part), and she eats it right down. That’s the easiest way for me to know she actually got it.
Soooo, Hunter’s Bump from torn ligament?
Adding Robaxin to the bute for muscle relaxing along with pain relief is something to ask about
Spend enough time walking and if this is “just” a torn ligament up there, you may find you have a pretty sound horse in the Spring. We can hope, right?
1-2lb a day means it’s cheap to feed
Sooooo, why did you buy sweet feed? If just for palatability in small amounts, 50lb will last a lonnng time
TC 30 provides almost 11mg Mg in 1lb. No need to add more at this point.
TC 30 also has an effective dose of Vit E of about 875IU/lb. It says 1000 but half that is synthetic. so take that into consideration for supplementing
UltraCruz Natural E is very in expensive on a per-1000IU basis. There’s a pelleted version too. And, they have a newer bucket version for those of us who hate dealing with the velcro opening of the bags 
Feed rep nutritionists are often free. Independents are not.
Not necessarily. They are different drugs and some horses do better on one or the other. And if you have a “dog” who can get a Previcox prescription, cutting the 227mg pills into quarters makes it a lot cheaper for a horse.
An option is to make a new thread, give brief (!!) history, and link to this one for anyone who wants to read up on all of it
TC30 is expensive per bag. But a bag lasts a good while. Versus a full ration of something like TC Senior where you might get just over a week out of a bag.
Does she need the sweet feed and timothy pellets if you are also feeding the RB? Is she lacking in weight? No need to be generous with it if you are feeding the RB. If you need to feed a lot of it, then you skip the RB. It’s just if you feed only a pound of sweet feed, you need to supplement with the RB.
Based on the vet visit, I think HA would be ok but I’m not sure if MSM is going to help much with a 3/5 lameness in one limb. Perhaps save that money towards ongoing pain management like Equioxx.
As for the rotation of the right side of the pelvis, I don’t know that it itself is diagnostic. She’s out of whack for sure but it could be going that direction from how she’s compensating versus being a direct result of an injury. A chriopractic evaluation might help but I’d be a little hesitant with that degree of lameness without imaging.
And of course be slow with any feed changes you make, at least as far as adding things. Taking away is less of a problem.
Good luck. Walking almost never hurts, so hopefully you will get some improvement keeping up with that while you budget for ongoing vet care.
You’re not alone in finding yourself turning into Walter White in the feed room. I have some sort of condition I’m pretty sure (I should probably take a supplement for it, LOL) that makes me want to adjust and tweak my horse’s nutrition all the time to make it darn near impeccable. When I read about people who are equine nutritionists I vibrate with jealousy. That’s my dream job. Why am I not one of those? I don’t think it was a thing when I was figuring out life and what I wanted to do to make a living.
I also had a good chuckle at the vet’s comments about your former horse on the invoice. My long-time farrier (now former farrier) used to forget the names of any new youngsters/babies I’d get. He was my farrier for almost 30 years, so he saw many of them come and go with the couple of “home boys” who he did for their entire lives or close to it. Anyway…when I got my current gelding, who is an appy, he’d forget his name most of the time so on the bill he’d have my other two guys’ names and then “Appy” or “App” for Milton. One day I got to the barn after he’d been there and instead of “Appy/App” it said “Aggravation” LOL! I’m guessing he wasn’t on his best behavior that day…heh heh heh.
Good luck on your endeavor to KISS. I try to do that too, and I still wind up being the supplement queen of the barn. One thing I’ve been introduced to recently is K.I.S. Trace. My new barefoot trimmer suggested it. It’s loaded with all the good stuff…amino acids, vitamin A and E, zinc, copper, biotin, magnesium, and other stuff. All in very good amounts too. I’ve just ordered some, and with it, I think I can eliminate some of the other stuff I’m feeding. Still have to give Smart Calm Ultra for the copious dose of magnesium it serves up…seems to really help my dude’s back. I also feed Omega Horseshine, which I have for years and years. Back in the day when I had multiple horses, if I tried to stop feeding OH, my older dudes would practically go crippled until I started back and they’d been on it a few days. I don’t know what kind of voodoo that is, but I am scared to betray the Omega Horseshine god.
I am a big believer in nutrition being able to heal a lot of issues…in horses and people.
Anyway…good luck to you!
