I’ve worked with a well know equine nutritionist in the past years. I know ration balancers are all the rage and practically everyone uses them. But, are they really necessary if the horse isn’t in moderate to heavy training/competing and is fed good quality grass hay? I notice a difference in energy level when putting my Friesian crosses on it in a negative way. I’m going to experiment on just giving them enough Senior feed, so they feel like they’ve been grained, and plenty of good quality hay. Anybody else have this possible dilemma?
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Do you have your hay tested?
You’re going to need something to balance out just hay; it’s not likely to cover all your bases in the right ratios, but you don’t know where things are off (and how much) unless you test.
My easy keeper gets a base of vitamin/mineral forage balancer (Vermont Blend Pro), plus Flax/Vit E in a couple cups of beet pulp as a carrier.
Whatever you’re feeding needs to be fed at the recommend rate as well, so if you’re feeding a ration balancer at half of what’s recommended for their weight, they aren’t going to get the amount of V/M they require.
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Yes Yes.
I tend to agree w/ you.
Am currently cutting back on
Amount of Sr. Feed and daily vit/min.
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I would reduce the amount of feed they get or maybe feed every other day the same amount
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What do you mean by a difference in energy in a negative way? Do they get amped up? How much balancer are they getting? Most balancers recommend 1-1.5 lb/day for a 1000-1200 lbs horse in light work, and that is usually less than a quart (most balancers come in about 1.2-1.4 lbs/quart).
I am not surprised anymore when someone comes in (I work in a feed store) and tells me their barn is feeding half a 3 quart scoop twice a day of a balancer, sometimes on top of a feed. That’s probably pushing 4+ lbs a day when the max feeding rate for high-nutrient need horses is 3 lbs/day. It’s definitely not a “less is more and more is better” situation.
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it depends on what you want. If you want ok nutrition, then they’re not necessary. if you want to avoid slowly developing issues then yes, they’re necessary. Hay has little to no vitamin E, so by default you need something in addition to just hay.
A whole lot of grasses in the US don’t have enough copper and zinc to meet bare minimum requirements when the horse is eating his normal 2% body weight. Quite a few areas don’t have enough calcium in grass, or the ratio with phosphorous is too low. If you don’t want to take that change, and you’re not getting it analyzed, then…
“Good quality grass hay” doesn’t mean it covers everything
what negative way? Not all horses can take soy, so there’s that, and there are soy-free ration balancers. There’s also the route of hay pellets and a forage balancer. Most forages provide enough protein, so most horses don’t technically need the protein from the ration balancer
that’s not covering nutrition, so is basically wasted. At least add a forage balancer, since they all pretty much need something to mix with them, they’re not terribly palatable
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Are we over feeding and over supplementing? I almost guarantee it.
Problem is, with horses being grazers, it’s really difficult to say what they are getting.
“Good hay” is a wide open term. Good in what sense? Good can mean different things for different situations. Good hay for a dairy cow =/= good hay for a metabolic horse =/= good hay for broodmares, etc. etc. Then when you factor in what they might or might not be picking up from their native soil, forage, and water and the balance and bioavailability of those nutrients… it gets even more difficult.
Every now and then I see horses in gorgeous condition who get nothing but “good hay” or pasture and I’m always a little jealous. But more often than not, I see forage-only horses who have a deficient look about them, even if their weight is fine.
So at the end of the day, for most of us, it’s more practical to err on the side of over supplementation than to try to figure out what the horses may or may not be lacking.
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Right, the opposite of “overfeeding/supplementing” isn’t to not feed anything but hay/grass.
The goal is, should always be, “supplementation suitable for the situation”
And by default, if you’re aiming for optimal nutrition, this means at least a decent v/m supplement that has appreciable amounts of things. Don’t bother with something that has 15mg of copper or 500mg of lysine for example. And to be clear, those might be incidental to the real benefits of a supplement ,but I’m talking about a reasonably robust nutritional supplement, not for allergies or whatever else.
And unless you test your horse and he’s just weird, ALWAYS add 1-2IU Vit E per pound body weight for a horse who’s only on hay
It’s also a good idea to test a horse every now and them for selenium and Vit E, so make sure what you/the forage is providing is giving enough. Don’t assume even grass provides enough E, though most of the time it does.
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I guess that I’m questioning the validity of supplementation. For years, we fed horses without ration balances, vitamins and minerals. If the horse is getting a good quality hay, I’m just wondering if that’s really all they need. Of course, you won’t get the answer from any nutritionist involved in formulating feeds, because feed companies jobs are to sell feed and supplements.
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My old horse gets quite a bit of senior feed as well as Buckeye Ultimate Finish 25. My other 3 horses get 1/2 to 1 pound twice a day of Triple Crown Senior, so very minimal. I rely on good hay for my horse’s nutritional needs unless they are in training.
I# of a RB daily. I weigh it and mark my measure accordingly.
It’s a catch-22.
Because you are right, feed and supplement companies profit off us believing we “need” their product.
But also, in my lifetime, the life expectancy and longevity of use have increased significantly for horses. I can still vividly remember when late teens was considered a “senior” horse and most likely needing retirement. Horses in their thirties were practically unheard of. Also, skinny horses were “acceptable,” especially if the horse was aged or a hot-blooded breed like a TB.
None of that is true anymore.
A lot of it is due to improvement in veterinary medicine and dentistry. But I’d bank a lot of it is also due to improved nutrition. Especially when it comes to older horses; it is not “hard” to keep a horse in good health when their teeth start failing like it used to be. Poor teeth used to be a death sentence; now many horses live quality lives for years with compromised dentition.
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Thats a fair question to ask, but unless you know through a hay analysis what they are getting…you have no idea if you are over or under supplementing anything.
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I do supplement with a vitamin E supplement. I use liquid Emcelle.
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I get that. But, I buy my hay at a cash & carry. About 25 bales at a time due to lack of storage for more. My horses are all 5As except for my 32 yr old Cushings mare. I am just wondering if we’re being brainwashed into thinking horses need more than they really do.
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For years we all fed a lot of sweet feed, too. I bought a horse that is allergic to alfalfa. She came to me eating Omelene 200, which is like giving a horse a candy bar. The owner of the feed store near me commented that lots of people fed Omelene and similar in the past, but that the industry has shifted to feeds with lower starch/sugar and that people are now more aware of nutritional content. My mare is a super easy keeper, so she’s on a ration balancer now.
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Im sure some people are. Just because that may be the case, doesn’t mean that it’s fair to the horse to just throw them hay and hope they are getting what they need. The whole “know better do better” adage.
You said you are working with a well known nutritionist…what advice are they giving you?
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But why, exactly?
and they didn’t live as long as they do now, in general. Imagine how many misbehaving horses were low in vitamin E and their muscles hurt becaues they were only eating hay? We now know that “Monday Morning Sickness” was actually a dietary issue in drafts with PSSM1.
Read the comments above regarding Vit E, calcium and phosphorous, copper and zinc. And, there are areas of the world where there’s not enough selenium in forage
Of course you can get the right answers from some of them, because it’s common knowledge among credible, well-educated nutritionists that forage alone isn’t optimal, and often not even just ok.
so you’re supplementing her forage
switch to a ration balancer to get better nutrition without high calories.
you’re still missing the point that hay alone doesn’t do it all, even for idle horses. The problem with idle horses is they get to choose what they do and don’t do, so it’s a lot easier for them to hide dietary issues
ok good. How much? If just 2000IU, then that’s fine. If you use more, then unless you have a deficiency issue (blood work), you could go cheaper with something like UltraCruz Natural E.
Very common for people to not be able to test their hay. However, if your 25 bales always come from the same supply - same field and cutting - then you could really test your next batch and see what’s what
on some level yes, companies have brainwashed consumers into buying things they don’t need, and that can even be harmful, and it’s not just about the equine industry. But this is where everyone has to do their own basic level of self-education
There’s a difference between “more than they really need” and “what they really need”
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Tying up used to be a pretty significant problem with more than just drafts!
And today it’s practically a non-issue.
The dietary imbalances we caused by feeding a lot of unfortified hard grains were real.
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Regarding some supplements, I looked into a very popular line that folks have been inquiring about. Their hoof supplement contains less than 0.5 mg of biotin (per two scoops), and a number of amino acids that horses naturally synthesize. The essential amino acids added are not remotely near any recommended effective rate.
A pound of ration balancer or a 4 oz of a quality forage balancer would supply far more nutrients than that well-marketed supplement.
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