You don’t say if corn is whole kernels or cracked/rolled. You will get more feed value from cracked or rolled corn because horse can chew it to further break it down during digestion. Whole corn kernels tend to not get chewed well because they are so hard. The kernels then just go on thru the horse instead of getting digested. Wasted money, wasted food product.
We do not feed BOSS or any molasses. Seen too many colics with the BOSS and our horses don’t need sugar in their diet. Locally. molasses will draw water in our high humidity, causing mold in feed, another good reason not to use molasses in feed.
We feed a mix of whole oats, cracked corn and soybean meal, which we have mixed at our lcoal mill. Vitamins and Selenium with Vit E (two different products) are top dressed on the grain mix. Horses get wet beet pulp daily with the grain, in their once-a-day feed. They get grass hay twice a day. We have local Selenium soil deficiency, so daily top dressing is essential to horses having enough Selenium and Vit E to absorb it, in their bodies. Our horses sweat, get used fairly hard when we condition and compete, so they lose Selenium and it has to be replaced. Daily top dressing Selenium on each hors’s feed insures they get enough. We do get them tested to KNOW they are not high or low in Selenium.
We have very good pasture. Soil is tested so yearly fertilizing supplies needed minerals to grow good pasture.
You might remind husband that fat young horses add extra weight on young, soft bone and tendons in legs. Harder to move that load above than if young horse is trim, athletic looking. None of our young horses carry extra weight or look “well rounded to plain fat,” like horses in the feed advertising photos. Fat horses are not desirable, hard on them just like people! We want athletes, not a meat product like beef cattle. Our horses live long, sound, use able lives on this diet. Has he checked her teeth? She might have something going on there. I just can’t feature feeding a young horse 16 pounds of grain daily, with poor results! No one here, even in hard work, gets more than a couple pounds of our mix. We get compliments on their lovely looks when we compete. They are large horses, 16-17H. Their brains would fall out and be unusable with silliness at that quantity of feed!!
