Turns out my mare is allergic to both alfalfa
and barley. Which leaves her about two pellets that I’ve found. One being the Pro Elite Safe Starch pellets. They really don’t have much taste and she’s not fond of them. She eats them but slowly throughout the day. She also gets rice bran oil on her food to help with weight. Anyone feed suggestions that don’t include either alfalfa or barley and that are tastier than low starch pellets? Any other additive that increased palatability that isn’t a total PITA to add to twice daily feed? Thanks!
Try mixing an oz of Cocosoya oil into her pellets (soy and coconut oil with flavoring–smells like toffee/butterscotch and most horses LOVE it). For adding oil, I use old washed out “tip and pour” supplement bottles with the one oz chamber for measuring. Makes adding oil easy and non-messy.
What about a DIY meal?
Grass hay pellets + a fat supplement + a high quality v/m supplement?
How much of the PE are you feeding?
Triple Crown Safe Starch Forage is a fortified Orchard/Timothy-based feed, no barley.
https://www.triplecrownfeed.com/products/safe-starch-forage/
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is it more palatable than rice bran oil? I feel like most horses love that and she doesn’t.
Please note that I was asking about feeds, not a complicated alternative feeding structure. How do you envision I’m going to get the vitamin/mineral supplement in a horse that is a picky eater? I’m trying to make feed more palatable, not less…she eats hay just fine, she doesn’t need forage pellets which will likely be just as unpalatable to her as the safe starch pellets…and I was looking for something that isn’t a PITA…note my original post.
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I have a horse like this. He has to eat “boring” food, aka nothing tasty, sugary, or exciting. He will eat a very small portion of oats in the morning and finish those, then his dinner with vit/min, msm, flax oil, and dried alfalfa is finished by morning, but not all at once.
When he ate a high sugar/NSC pellet, you can bet he scarfed that up!
I think I’ve heard of others using fenugreek to make things more palatable. Or maybe she’d be more into a beet pulp mash (add it to feed)? I thought Ukele (sp?) and/or Smartpak had some flavoring additives available. I cannot recall if they were for feed or water.
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With all due respect I feed a do it yourself mash system and it really isn’t that complicated.
Beet pulp base, VMS of choice, flax, and then oats if needed. My mare gets a couple alfalfa cubes for flavor but you could use Timothy cubes. Soaked in hot water then add VMS and mix.
Scoop scoop scoop, pour on water, let sit while you ride, feed. I don’t find it necessary to feed mash twice a day.
If you are trying to avoid specific common ingredients then going with basic ingredients is sometimes necessary.
I don’t think there’s anything you can pour on pellets to make them tastier other than molasses. Which defeats the idea of low starch pellets.
How is your horse’s appetite and eating otherwise?
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So nobody can offer up an alternative to what is a very limited selection of feeds? Noted :rolleyes:
How do you envision I’m going to get the vitamin/mineral supplement in a horse that is a picky eater?
Many of them are quite palatable, and you have only tried 2 “tasteless” feeds that she eats slowly. How am I supposed to know that means “picky eater”?
Besides, it’s not complicated. Pick a low NSC base she likes for the calories (because you have to do that anyway, no matter if it’s DIY or commercial), pick a v/m that is suitable, add a fat supplement, and you’re done. I DIY anywhere from 1-4 meals a day, and even when it’s 4 of them, the whole process takes me less than 5 minutes to fix all 4, and it’s more than 3 ingredients.
I’m trying to make feed more palatable, not less…
Orchardgrass pellets are pretty tasty, I heard. Timothy pellets tend to be iffy it seems.
MANY fat supplements are very tasty, and many v/m supplements are at least “tasteless”, to outright yummy. Don’t knock what you haven’t tried. I’ve fed several that would be eaten right out of my hand.
she eats hay just fine, she doesn’t need forage pellets which will likely be just as unpalatable to her as the safe starch pellets…and I was looking for something that isn’t a PITA…note my original post.
And yet, many horses find hay pellets , or chopped hay, delicious, while snubbing a “tasteless” pelleted feed. Fortified pelleted feeds are not always tasty for one reason or another. I have one who disliked the old formula of TC 30, but would eat alfalfa pellets all day long. TC changed the taste, and now she loves it.
Good luck. I really do wish you the best. You’re looking for eliminating an ingredient found in pretty much every major brand of feed. Eliminating barley is really easy. Alfalfa? Way harder.
This means you either have to pay $$$$ for a designer feed, if it’s even available locally, and the ones I know of are high NSC, or $$$ to have something suitable shipped in.
Is the other of the “tasteless” feeds you’ve tried the TC Low Starch? If not, try that. If so, and she hates it, then I don’t know what else to suggest. I heard Blue Seal has an alfalfa-free product, but I’m not going to search through all the feeds to see what it is, and if it also has no barley.
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Horsetech for sure has powdered flavorings. I’m sure others do as well.
Lots of horses love beet pulp. If calorie needs aren’t high, that’s an option. Or even a smaller amount can be added to a pellet they aren’t otherwise terribly fond to add enough interest.
And no, they don’t have to soak for hours - literally 3 minutes gets shreds soaked enough for all but the most choke-prone horses, especially if you use warm water. Cold? Make it 5.
Smells like toffee/butterscotch to me–and my gelding just loves it mixed into his soaked beet pulp/alf pellet meals. I started with it straight, then cut it 50:50 with canola oil, and now am doing 75:25 canola to Cocosoya.
My friend’s mare who is allergic to alfalfa (and bermuda and about 4 dozen other things) gets timothy pellets, beet pulp and her supplement. It is really easy to do. IMHO the most PITA thing about feeding is adding oil.
Does your horse need a low starch feed, or is that just what you found with no alfalfa?
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Sorry for some reason I didn’t get alerts on this thread. She doesn’t need low starch it’s just what I found. I was just hoping to see if there were other options out there that people might be aware of since I’d exhausted label-reading at my two local feed stores.
Sorry, it’s my pet peeve when people ask for a particular lane of advice and are given something not in that lane…that was one of those days. Just looking to see if people happened to know of feeds without barley or alflafa or an additive to increase palatability and that isn’t a PITA. Not asking anyone to do research for me. I find the more convoluted my feeding program, the more likely someone is going to mess it up when my horse is in day care at shows (where grooms change and I’m not there because I’m back at home taking care of my human child and other horses) or when someone is helping me feed when I’m not home…my horses don’t live at a training or boarding barn, so I try to make it as simple as possible for when i"m at a show and someone is taking care of a horse they don’t live with, or when I’m gone and someone like my non-horsey husband or 7 year old is feeding.
Do you jave coprice over there. Horses do love boiled rice…so do the dogs and chooks!
I googled it and it says Australian rice so maybe you dont have it.
High quality ingredients combined with extrusion technology delivers superior digestibility and improved availability of nutrients in every mouthful. Containing no other cereal grains but Australian rice and/or stabilised rice bran, our extruded feeds are gluten free and high fat, satisfying the nutrient requirements of your horse without any fizzy behaviour.
To answer your question (also my pet peeve), all my horses LOVE the Cocasoya liquid. It must taste like horse crack, and my mare would wait to eat her grain until you top dressed her bucket with the liquid. I think if you mixed it up and it coated the pellets your horse would eat the pellets better.
The biggest issue for me is it’s a liquid so needs to be kept warm in the winter and you can’t premix it.
I get that Triple Crown is the be all end all, but you can’t get it everywhere and it gets really annoying when it comes up as the only solution.
What do you have available locally?
We are in NoVa so we have Tri County, Southern States, Co-op, and Tractor Supply. There is also one of those places called Horse Sense that custom makes feed but I find them a little culty. She loved her Pianissimo from Cavalor before we discovered her barley allergy. She also happily ate Purina strategy healthy edge, but would sometimes go off it at shows, even when on Ulcergard. She’s a pretty easy keeper and is very cresty so I try not to pump her with too much sugar but she thinks low starch pellets are like cardboard.
