Blue seal sentinel LS making horse nutty?!?!?

[DieBlaueReiterin]

I searched but couldn’t find anything relevant…

The ONLY thing that’s changed in my 6yo ottb’s life over the last few weeks is the feed - she’s been on ultium/tc complete/safe choice/whatever higher fat feed was available at my tsc that week, mixed together with what I had left over from the previous week since I adopted her 11/16. I switched to the sentinel bc tsc suddenly started carrying it and I’ve always heard good things.

Well all the sudden this horse, who was previously the laziest thing ever, is INSANE. hyper, nervous, pushy, dancing on the cross ties, and literally forgot how to ground drive (you could’ve plowed the fields w her a month ago). Has this happened to anyone else???

[ryansgirl]

I’ve heard of it happening but have heard it happening on all kinds of feed.

My old TB was on the Performance LS and I switched him to TC Senior (lower NSC) and he just about lost his mind on the TC Sr. He was the most stoic horse you could imagine but TC made him absolutely crazy. Switched back to the LS and got my old guy back. He did great on it right up until I put him down at 31. So total opposite of your TB.

I’m not a fan of TC Complete or Safechoice - both have higher than I like NSCs in them. Sounds like you were mixing things with whatever was available?

[DieBlaueReiterin]

Go figure! I guess you just never know! And yeah, I normally just buy 3 bags of one of the above higher fat options and feed it til I run low and stock up again. None of those ever caused any issues and she’s done fine on all of them. Sadly, I just bought two more bags of the darn sentinel yesterday bc tsc was sold out of everything else except one bag of ultium. If I’d made the connection a couple days sooner I obv wouldn’t have. Now I’m stuck with it.

Anyone near Philly on the market for a couple bags of blue seal sentinel??

[Simkie]

YES. YES YES YES. This stuff made two of my four insane. Dangerously so. They’re not normally sensitive to feed, but holy cow, they were DRAGONS on the Sentinel LS.

Switched off of it, horses went back to normal.

​​​​​​You’re not the only one! :lol:

[DieBlaueReiterin]

Thank you so much for your reply! It’s very comforting! I am very hopeful that this is all it is… Other than like literally a brain tumor, I cannot imagine what could cause such a sudden and intense behavior change in an animal! I’ve never seen anything like it. She’s off of it as of today and fingers crossed!

[jetsmom]

Feed and supplements can make a horse crazy. I put her on Glaanzen 3 years ago because I heard it was great for hooves, coat and attitude. 2 days in, he was practically unsafe to handle. Wild eyed, dancing in cross ties, running forward and back, side to side. Bolting on longeline. Jigging at walk and spooking nonstop. Rode hard for an hr and still high as a kite. Took him off it, and 2 days later he was back to normal.
. Most reviews of that supplement were very positive. The company was great to deal with. But jet really reacted to something in it. I’ve heard of other horses reacting to msm. So it was probably something in that feed.

[BoyleHeightsKid]

I had my old man on the Sentinel LS for years and I LOVE this feed… never an issue for him, he looked fantastic and it never made him crazy he was on close to 6lbs a day. But trying to put a little weight on the new kid and upped his feed slightly after he came off of stall rest and I had to back him off it because he was chasing my old man around leaving some serious marks on him. I switched him over to Buckeye Safe and Easy Performance. It’s lower in NSC (12%) and just a tad bit lower in calories per pound. It’s taken the edge off and he’s managed to gain a little weight. He’s still a bit of a butt head but he’s a bored young horse and needs a job. I like to keep things simple so I switched my old man over too and he seems to be doing fine on it so far. It’s also about $5 a bag cheaper so there’s a bonus. If I don’t see that same bloom in his coat he had with the Sentinel then I will switch him back. On the Sentinel he keeps his dapples all the way into fall and he’s a dark bay on 24/7 turnout.

Every horse is different. Yours may just be sensitive to something in the feed because the majority of horses I know on this feed do very very well on it.

[DieBlaueReiterin]

Very interesting - thank you for the reply! So now we are up to four horses that have had this strange reaction to sentinel LS. so strange, bc so many horses do so well on it! I really wonder what it is that’s affecting them so much.

As an aside, I called tractor supply and they were kind enough to offer me a refund on those last two bags I bought, even though they were open, so five stars to them. I thought that was pretty nice of them.

[LookmaNohands]

I have never had a problem with it and I have fed it to several horses over the past 4 years or so. Most were OTTBs.

[skipollo]

My OTTB is on Sentinel LS and does great on it. He gets 8lbs/day. He’s a normally quiet horse. He lives out 24/7. Lots of horses where I board get it and none have gotten hot on it.

[bt1]

Never seen or heard of any of the Sentinels making any horse hot. PS I avoid buying feed at TSC like the plague because the ones around me do not know how to store it…always looks at least a little old when I open the bag and had a few so funky I returned them.

[walktrot]

My 23 y.o. Paint gelding has been on LS for a couple of years and he’s as chilled out now as he was before. He’s on it to maintain his weight and it has worked great. I’ve spoken to the Blue Seal nutritionists at their booth at Equine Affaire and they suggested LS rather than senior and explained why. I would be tempted to call them and see what the have to say.

I’ve seen posts on COTH about problems with feed products purchased at Tractor Supply. Big chains have big warehouses. I wonder if they keep close track of storage conditions and turnover rate.

[Simkie]

@bt

Never seen or heard of any of the Sentinels making any horse hot. PS I avoid buying feed at TSC like the plague because the ones around me do not know how to store it…always looks at least a little old when I open the bag and had a few so funky I returned them.

Welp, now you’ve heard of it :lol:

This also comes up pretty frequently on FB. While not common, it’s also not unheard of to have horses lose it on this stuff–there are always a handful of us or more in any one thread about it who report the same thing.

I wish I knew WHAT it was that set them off! They’ve all been on various different grains without that sort of reaction. Nutrena, Legends, Triple Crown, Purina, ProElite…ho-hum, just another day. NSC from highish to low, they’re just fine. But Sentinel LS? HELLO FIRE BREATHING DRAGONS. It was stunning, really.

[halt]

Actually – count me in as someone who saw a change in my horse for the worse on Sentinel Blue Seal LS too.

My gelding was on oats/alfalfa but I wanted to simplify and put him on LS… and he went from a pretty chill dude to very tense all the time, reactive, and super sensitive undersaddle. I actually at first thought it was physical, but when I switched him back to alfalfa/oats he was back to his normal self.

I wish I knew what it was too. I will say we fed our entire herd it for a while (Ultium got crazy expensive – also before this gelding) and there weren’t any behavioral changes… but we did have one gelding who would LEAVE his grain (he never did that!) while on LS… I think it was too textured and took too long for him to eat when compared to a more condensed extruded pellet feed.

BTW, he is on Poulin Fibremax now, no problems.

[DieBlaueReiterin]

Huge sigh of relief that she seems to be back to her old self…she got no grain or handling on tues/weds (she lives out in a small herd on a round bale literally in BO’s backyard this time of year so doesn’t require handling if she’s not being fed) and on thurs I went up to feed her. She was her normal lazy bones self, plodded through the gate both ways on a loose leadline, stood and ate her food, hung out with me getting pats after she finished eating, etc.

i havent worked her yet (will today), but even just the process above became a nightmare on the LS - shoving past me at the gate, pacing around instead of eating, etc. someone mentioned above they knew a horse that wouldn’t eat the LS and it’s funny bc she wouldn’t either at first - i wish I would’ve listened to her and just scrapped the whole experiment right then!

anyway, the real heroes here are tractor supply, who graciously refunded me for the two bags I bought on Sunday after I explained what happened and didn’t even require me to give back the unused product. (I offered to rebag it, ha.) i then took advantage of their buy 4, get one free Purina sale and got 5 bags of ultium for $84, so overall hopefully this bizarre story has a happy ending.

Thanks to everyone for their input!

[Critter]

I had switched mine from Strategy to the BS Sentinal LS…she didn’t change (she was nutty to start, that’s why I tried the LS). But she did get super fat, really quick…and she was not getting that much (1qt 2x a day for a 17h mare). She looked pregnant!! I ended up cutting it and giving her some timothy pellets so she thought she was getting food.

What I did find helped her - I took her off her joint supplement, which had very high levels of MSM. She is sooo much quieter. She will always be a hot horse, but she wasn’t even comfortable in her own skin. 1 week off the MSM was better, now its been 3 months and she is way calmer and less intense.

[BoyleHeightsKid]

@DieBlaueReiterin

Very interesting - thank you for the reply! So now we are up to four horses that have had this strange reaction to sentinel LS. so strange, bc so many horses do so well on it! I really wonder what it is that’s affecting them so much.

As an aside, I called tractor supply and they were kind enough to offer me a refund on those last two bags I bought, even though they were open, so five stars to them. I thought that was pretty nice of them.

Just a thought, it is more calorie dense than a lot feeds, so it’s possible that you are just feeding too much of it. 1580 calories per pound. So there’s that to consider as well.

eta: I do think that Ultium is one of the few feeds that is more calorie dense.

[Simkie]

@BoyleHeightsKid

Just a thought, it is more calorie dense than a lot feeds, so it’s possible that you are just feeding too much of it. 1580 calories per pound. So there’s that to consider as well.

But it’s also such a LIGHT feed at 0.85 # per quart. Unless you’re really upping the volume to account for the density, you’re not getting the calories.

The CarbCare Performance (which it what I went to, so have those figures handy) is 1550 kcal/lb and 1.48 # per quart. Nearly the same on the calories, but almost TWICE as dense. Whatever set my two off absolutely wasn’t the calorie count–they’re on more now.

Yeah, we should all be weighing feed and not feeding by scoops, particularly through feed changes. Just pointing out that if you DO feed by scoops, you’re probably not overloading on the calories with the Sentinel.