I searched and found a couple messages from people who used the beta version. Anyone using it currently? Thoughts?
I have used it and still do because I have a year long subscription.
I wonât be renewing it though.
I find it infuriating to deal with because there is no allowance for a stabled horse eating hay at night, it will automatically reduce the amount of forage because (and I had an email 'discussion over a number of days with the admin over this) âyour horse will eat less grass during the day if it has access to hay at night.â
Riiiiiggghhht âŠ
It throws the whole thing out and there is no way to adjust for this on the program and trying to discuss it with the admin was like beating my head against a brick wall. :mad:
They actually asked me how I was monitoring my horses during the day to determine they werenât reducing their intake. Ummm because their stomachs empty every 1 1/2 hrs or so, so I seriously doubt they are full from their overnight hay 6 hrs later? 
YMMV though.
If you donât stable then it wonât be an issue and it would be quite useful.
Iâm sticking to my nutrition books and nutting it out myself from now on though.
I love it and I have not had an issue like weese.
If you have your horse on pasture it will take that into account and tell you need less forage if hay is fedâŠit should do that. My horses do eat less during the day if they are fed hay. They snooze much longer in the afternoon, eating less.
No program is going to be able to tell you down to the nano ounce what you should feed or not feed, itâs up to you to take the analysis and balance it all out with your horse.
That said? I love it and will renew. It is so helpful for balancing the requirements of my babes through seniors and for keeping track of Pacoâs PSSM diet and more. I find it to be very accurate and the new cost tracking is fabulous.
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I use it and love it. Never had any problems.
As equineartworks said, there is no such thing as a program that will nail down the diet to the teeniest little nâth of a percentage. But the program is great for getting an average, overall picture of what you feed and if your horse is getting enough.
I use the Pro version so it reports on many more nutrients than just the biggies, and I think the program does a really great job. I think the developers have put a LOT of time and consideration into the formulas.
Yes, Iâve found some minor errors, and have reported them to the Admin. They have been fixed within the hour. Also I agree the new cost tracking feature is GREAT!!! I love that feature!
I also use FeedXL to do direct supplement to supplement comparisons. So I donât enter any feed or forage - just the one ounce or whatever of supplement, and see what percentage of each nutrient it adds to the horseâs diet. I was pretty surprised to see that most of the big name supplements out there provide only teenie tiny percentages - like, not enough to even be worth the time and money - barely a blip on the radar - of most nutrients.
I had a short subscription and liked it very much. It was incredibly helpful in showing me that my horses protein needs were being far exceeded, crazy too high, and so with its help I made the leap from ration balancer to min/vit suppy and my ponies lost some weight (which is a good thing for them).
I also liked it because I could easily make sure certain needs were being met, like ca: p, without having to do math⊠which I loathe.
I never did get to try the cost tracking feature, it was just being launched when my subscription ran out.
Their customer service is awesome, they had one product that I was using not in their suppy list. I emailed and the profile was up and useable by the next morning.
One thing I really didnât like however is that there didnât appear to be a way to enter in the details of a hay profile. Since its 99% of my horseâs diets, and I put up different hays that have different profiles, its a pretty important factor other than âgoodâ or âpoorâ or âexcellentâ. Thats the main reason I let the subscription lapse and wonât be renewing, without being able to factor my hay specifics it seemed a bit pointless. If anyone knows if this is changed or if I missed it somehow, Iâd appreciate knowing.
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Admin will load your hay test results onto your profile so you can load it instead of the generic options available. You just have to email the results to them and they upload it usually within a day. 
[slaps forehead] well, wish I saw that the first time around! lol, thanks
LOL hey donât worry, itâs not your fault! They could make this feature a little more well known, and better advertised on the site. I didnât know until I asked them about it.
[QUOTE=buck22;5084805]
I had a short subscription and liked it very much. It was incredibly helpful in showing me that my horses protein needs were being far exceeded, crazy too high, and so with its help I made the leap from ration balancer to min/vit suppy and my ponies lost some weight (which is a good thing for them).
I also liked it because I could easily make sure certain needs were being met, like ca: p, without having to do math⊠which I loathe.
I never did get to try the cost tracking feature, it was just being launched when my subscription ran out.
Their customer service is awesome, they had one product that I was using not in their suppy list. I emailed and the profile was up and useable by the next morning.
One thing I really didnât like however is that there didnât appear to be a way to enter in the details of a hay profile. Since its 99% of my horseâs diets, and I put up different hays that have different profiles, its a pretty important factor other than âgoodâ or âpoorâ or âexcellentâ. Thats the main reason I let the subscription lapse and wonât be renewing, without being able to factor my hay specifics it seemed a bit pointless. If anyone knows if this is changed or if I missed it somehow, Iâd appreciate knowing.[/QUOTE]
I feel the exact same way. It is great for a baseline but I pretty much only feed hay and wish there was a way for me to input my hay analysis and then see a nutrient graph from there.
It is definitely great in comparing supplements and in the end I have concluded I donât really need them and I can save a ton of money and just put that toward more good quality hay.
ETA: Dâoh! Just read the two previous posts! I have 2 weeks left on my sub and will see about sending them the hay analysis. I didnât see that feature either!
I also have a subscription and find it useful.
Caitlin
just had to resurrect this old post and say that FeedXL is fabulous with the ability to have your hay analysis input. I just signed up for a new subscription and with my hay analysis data, I found a hole in my horseâs diet I didnât realize was there.
The cost tracking feature is really nifty too, cuts out a lot of math on my end, and, in the end, Iâm not spending quite as much as I thought I was feeding the boys. Sigh of relief there.
Customer service is second to none too, immediate personal replies to my emails. Great company. Two thumbs up.
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Yep I just renewed for another year as well! I LOVE FeedXL!!! Itâs so useful, and not to mention fun 
A great example of saving money with it is the Source supplement. I needed iodine in their diets to meet requirements, and the current hay and diets supplied almost nothing. The loose salt I buy is non-iodized so nothing is coming from that. So I bought a bucket of Source, and the manufacturer says to feed 1 whole scoop per day per horse. Well, when I inputted that much into FeedXL, it was supplying like 800% of the RDI for iodine. So I just give them each 1/4 scoop and the RDI is more than met, and the supplement now costs almost nothing per month. If I didnât have FeedXL, Iâd be paying 4x for Source what is actually necessary. So with that one supplement alone, FeedXL has paid for itself.
I used the free trial to do several permutations of different feeding programs that I have used, am using, or might want to use.
I found that all of them were adequate, so I felt like Iâd gotten what I needed.
It was sort of interesting to see that all of my horses are getting about 5000 times the salt and other minerals they need, which is why I no longer worry much (not that I ever did, really) about stuffing electrolytes into them. :lol:
I want to revive this and see what peopleâs current opinions on FeedXL are. Have glitches been fixed? What sort of info are you able to input about your horse and its stall routine (out 24/7, stalled x hours per day, etc.)? Does it give recommendations on feeds or does it just tell you what you are lacking?
I still donât use it. As another poster said, the forage factor is too much of a guess to put much faith in the concentrate and supplement portion. Pasture varies according to the time of year, and there is absolutely no way anyone knows exactly how many pounds of grass a horse eats, and the same if they are on round bales or free choice hay. If your horses are mostly stalled, and you analyze and weigh your hay, it can be useful.
I spoke to my vet about this, and she said that nutritional deficiencies in horses are very rare; in 35 years, neither she nor any vet she knows has treated a horse for a nutritional deficiency, other than malnutrition resulting from starvation. A lot of this stuff is a hype to keep the supplement industry going. Owners get guilt tripped because the horse âmightâ be missing something.
Does anyone track their OWN diet, or their CHILDRENS diet like FeedXL? Most of us eat enough, and our horses eat enough, that we are covering all the bases. Do you know anyone who has a nutritional deficiency?
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I use it, on occasion, and I like it. I find it useful mostly for the supplement end of things, V/M, as I donât have a hay analysis. A couple times I have found I was âdouble supplementingâ so in that regard (dâoh!) itâs helpful to me.
Besides I am a bit of a nerd in that regard.
Its output is only as good as its input. Itâs not fair to use generic numbers for a given forage and expect it to give you good answers, when your forage may be very different.
Itâs also a bit misleading in some areas - it always says the diet is deficient in B12, but thatâs because horses are good at making their own, so itâs not a high priority to add it to feeds in high enough amounts to give them âenoughâ.
