I wouldn’t feed wheat bran, but you can do rice bran. However, that does bring calories, which is a problem here it seems 
I wonder how much bran it would take? If she’s close and the calcium isn’t too high, maybe?
Why the issue with wheat bran? I give one pound with the mash once per week.
I have some major easy keepers. They get 1/4 lb of 30% ration balancer from Triple Crown, just so I can add in Platinum Performance Vitamins. You’ll be simply stunned at the difference of feeding Platinum Performance vitamins! But if that’s still too many calories I’m trying something else for 2 of mine that have got to lose weight. Triple crown makes a “Safe Starch Hay”. You’ll look at it and say it’s way too expensive. However, I strongly suggest you buy 8-10 bales and try it. It is chopped and packed so tightly that it goes 2-4 times as far as a regular bale of hay, AND it has the complete amount of vitamins mixed in, so they need no other hay or vitamins, although I add Kentucky Equine Research’s E)-3 Vitamin E, Omega Oil because it dramatically helped their arthritic pain! I do give a flake of alfalfa late at night to buffer their stomach till morning, but they simply LOVE that Safe Starch hay! And it’s low starch so they don’t risk foundering.
This horse doesn’t have dietary protein deficiency. She lost protein during the Salmonella disease event. Given that adult horses easily meet and exceed their own protein requirements on most pasture and/or grass hays alone, she should not need special supplementation even to recover from this protein loss. Out of curiosity, did/does she have a lot of ventral and/or leg edema? That can happen with severely low albumin levels. It will just take time.
Of course, adding some alfalfa or otherwise increasing her protein intake just fine. I would go slow and keep it simple for now out of respect for her recent GI insult/inflammation that is still in process of recovery. You could always have your vet recheck protein at some point later if you are worried about it. But unless I had a specific reason to worry, then I would literally never think about the horses protein again
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Alfalfa gets a bad reputation, but I think it’s great for all horses. Two of my geldings get 1lb ration balancer and 8-10lbs of alfalfa a day in the winter. That’s it. They also have the grass in the pasture, but its dead by the time I’m stalling them and provides little to no nutrition, just something to do. They are healthy, shiny, and more plump than I’d like, but that isn’t the alfalfa’s fault, but genetics 
StormyDay, why do they need ration balancer with alfalfa?
That’s interesting. I could ask for a recheck of her protein in a few weeks to make sure it wasn’t just from illness. I do think she might do well with a flake of alfalfa per day replacing some of her coastal. I don’t think that will be enough to make her gain weight. I’m also going to check on Tifton 85 hay.
Many EMS horses cannot have any alfalfa
The majorly easy keepers would have to get a choice between less higher calorie alf, or more lower cal grass hay. I’d choose the latter
Or, they’re plump because the alfalfa is giving 10-20% more calories than the same weight grass hay.
Hay is still hay, deficient and/or unbalanced in nutrients
Anything mixed with the Coastal is better than straight Coastal 
That’s in the back of my mind as well. I have always been nervous feeding coastal.
No matter what hay you feed, it’s still deficient in certain nutrients. Testing it is the only way to know which ones
They’ve been fed other hays in the past with no change.
I seriously don’t get the alfalfa hate. Maybe it’s just where I grew up since we fed it so often.
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I don’t get the hate either. It works for some, not for others, period. Use if it works, don’t use if it it doesn’t. Understand it has issues and limitations just like grass hays.
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Sorry to disagree, alfalfa is not a grass, but a legume and has a different nutrition profile than grasses.
We have fed alfalfa to all our horses in Europe and in the US and didn’t have any problem whatsoever from feeding it.
Our many broodmares and offspring TBs and quarter horses, our horses in training, for many years race horse training, many that we had raised, all had alfalfa hay, as per our different vets and nutritionists.
They considered alfalfa a complete horse feed when it comes to nutrition, other than as mentioned the calcium/phosphorus imbalance on a fast growing skeleton as in horses up to about 2 years old.
In training and at the track our horses thrived on alfalfa and whole oats alone, had one quarter horse set a new track record, a TB tie one and others do very well also.
Their nutritional level had to be very good to train and perform at that level, a proof that, fed properly, alfalfa is one more fine option for horses.
We ran bloodwork on our horses as needed, more often in those in training, still today in older horses and came back fine, other than ONE horse with PPID, a horse we bought at 15 and already had that problem then.
His thyroid level was the lowest our vets had ever measured, was put on a thyroid supplement so as to bring his metabolism up to normal and no, he was not then metabolically more active than normal so as to then process any food any different than a normal horse and so be able to live on alfalfa.
Alfalfa is one more valid form of nutrition for most horses and a fine one.
Alfalfa may or not help the OP’s horse, that is for her to determine, fed on her vet’s advice and going by her mare’s response, if she tries to feed any alfalfa.
That sounds like a first cutting that was cut late to me. Much more leaf, hopefully mid bloom and fine stems in 2nd cut and after. I fed my easy keeper alfalfa mix and she did real well on it. I kept her to the first cutting and obviously she didn’t have it free choice ( she gets no hay free choice).
But there’s more to it than that.
Just looking at Equi-Analytical for 15 years of legume hay which, granted, likely contains some clover “hay” but is also likely largely alfalfa, these are the averages for iron, copper, and zinc, respectively
400.913
9.013
26.839
That’s a ratio of roughly 44:1:2.88
WAY too much iron relative to copper, and almost but not quite enough the bare min for zinc relative to copper (should be 1:3-1 cu:zn)
20lb of 8ppm copper hay is only 81mg - less than the 100mg required of an 1100lb horse in moderate work.
The high end of copper in their samples is 13.918ppm, which is just 118mg at 20lb, barely enough, and if that’s paired with the high iron, that’s still a ratio of 28:1 which is still too high.
Unfortunately you cannot get accurate blood work done for most minerals - too tightly controlled by the body. Deficiencies and imbalances show up other ways - excessive coat fading, general skin issues, slower healing wounds, etc. And that doesn’t even take into account that all hay ends up deficient in Vit E, alfalfa just holds out a bit longer than grass hays.
That doesn’t at all discount its benefits. It’s just not as complete as it’s made out to be.
Minerals can cause lots of problems. Selenium is another difficult one. There can be selenium deficient areas right next to selenium rich areas in the same part of your state. Not as big a deal for pleasure horses, but for breeding, it’s crucial to know.
We give our horses a vitamin mineral supplement, but the ration balancer frequently has vitamins and minerals as well. It seems either one, but not both would be appropriate.
Se concerns are regardless of grasses, legumes, or hays. The big deciding factors are the soil, and selenium accumulating plants
Heck forget state, this is even at the county level. Test the horse to know if his diet needs modifications
Not frequently - always. That’s their purpose, stuff relatively the same nutrition into 1lb-ish as a regular feed has in 4-6lb
And sometimes both are appropriate, depending on a forage analysis and the contents of the v/m supp. For example a lot of people add a 1/2 serving of California Trace to a full serving of a ration balancer or regular feed
