I’m sure many of you remember when COB (corn, oats, barley) was THE feed to feed. I remember there were two cans in the barn; one of COB, one of flax.
And the OTTB’s looked darn good. Fat, healthy. Maybe a little too spicy.
I was thinking of this a few days ago as I was trying again to find something to feed my older OTTB who refuses to gain weight. Maybe simpler was better? Maybe I need to go find some COB?
I can’t really imagine the benefit of ditching a balanced fortified feed for high octane high NSC unfortified grains.
For hard keepers I start with truly free choice tested hay and/or 24/7 pasture. From there, there’s a dozen quality senior options and great fat supplements. I’d exhaust all of that before I started drinking old school kool aid.
Unfortunately he’s got like 3 teeth left, hates soaked anything, and gets diarrhea if there’s too much fat/oil in his grain.
I think ive got his food down… he seems to be gaining now. But as I looked around at the trash cans of food and supplements for him, I just thought it was so funny that we all used to feed something so simple and have results with it!
I had to give an extra meal of rolled oats with a handful of TS Senior to my OTTB when he was in his 30s to help him maintain his weight. It was a battle as he got older.
He was never a hay face and would only eat the leaves and the tenderest of stems of his alfalfa. He also had free choice orchard grass or timothy (whichever seemed to interest him on any given day), but he didn’t eat much of those either.
His main meal at night was a soup of alfalfa and timothy pellets, rice bran, TS Senior, Weight Builder, Pro-Bios and Vitamin E. He loved his slop.
Good luck with whatever you decide, but I definitely had luck with the oats. Gatsby at 35ish slurping up his slop like a good boy. 
Before I added the oats. Just a little too light for an old man for my taste.
He is beautiful!
Aw, thanks. He was a handsome boy. You should have seen him when he was young and fit. (That was the days before cell phones, so all his old pictures are in a box in the garage somewhere).
I’ve been wrestling with this a lot lately.
I’m in my 40s and my life seems to be split into two horse owning eras:
My first ~20 years where horses lived on COB or locally milled sweet feed, we fed almost no supplements except maybe a bute regimen for creaky horses. Vet visits were mainly vaccines, coggins, and emergencies: occasional sutures, chokes, colics, etc. Teeth were done when we thought they were a problem. Farrier came out ever 8 weeks. Deworming was newly OTC and done indiscriminately. We had no body workers, no saddle fitters, etc.
Compare that to my last ~20 years that have been dominated by complex nutrition, supplements galore, protocolized medical care, advanced diagnostics, body work, custom fit everything.
Yet horses seem to have infinitely more problems today than they did when I was a kid.
I wish I had a Time Machine to go back just to get a more complete view of what was similar or different. Did horses truly have less problems or did we just not recognize the problems? Am I remembering only the good and forgetting the bad? I think it’s probably a mix of all of the above, but it sure is frustrating. Despite all of our advances, sometimes it seems so hard for horses to just exist without issue today.
Sorry for going down the rabbit hole. But I think about this a lot.
I recently switched my horses over from commercial feed to alfalfa pellets, hull free oats, and Vermont blend pro, in part because of what Tex is touching on above.
They all are doing well and a few weird persistent things have resolved.
Going to straight cob is another leap past where I am (and honestly not something even possible here with no mills!) but even just adding oats might be something for you to consider. My old lady mare is cleaning up her feed pan better now than she ever did on commercial feed.
Same here. Then again, while I am firmly in the camp of doing better when you know better, I know many others who are not. I see their horses daily. I observe their eyes, mostly. And I never want to see that look in my own.
There is a mill local to me that still mills and sells its own “complete” feed. Complete all right, with corn and other ground right in. I didn’t like it back in the day and I sure don’t like it now.
I do remember the days of COB… wet cob and dry cob… lol.
Totally agree. But my question is whether or not what we “know” now is truly better.
I don’t think we should go back to the olden days. Many things are clearly superior today. Horses live longer, stay in work longer (in theory; we can debate whether horses are sounder or not but we can all agree a 20 year old riding horse isn’t as odd as it once was). I certainly see less skin issues. Less behavioral issues, I think. We don’t just accept things like “cold backed” or “a bucker” etc. Less issues with things like tying up.
But I see so many more metabolic problems, endocrine problems, autoimmune-like problems, etc. Not just in horses, but in all domestic mammals, including people. It makes you pause and ask why. Sure, these issues existed back then, but they seem to have increased A TON.
It makes me pause and wonder if it’s diet, because our feeding regimens are drastically different. Yet that’s not the only difference.
I agree with you Tex. As with all things I think, we need to find the ‘middle ground’, or moderation in all things.
Maybe like many things a misguided attempt to “right the wrongs of the past”?
Discussing this and asking questions in a good beginning, and willingness to ask them is a sign of intelligence.
I am 64 and I remember the pre- supplement, pre-commercial feed days too. I used to feed oats and hay … with pasture turnout. My horses were all sound and healthy. I have 22 year old mare with EMD so she gets SafeChoice Special Care and grass hay on a dry lot. My retired 22 year old gelding doesn’t seem to need much more than hay and good pasture but during his working life he got Triple Ctown Complete. He did perfectly fine on that, with pasture, grass and alfalfa hay, but I can’t help but wonder if he would have done just as well on plain oats. He worked 5/6 days a week…3 or 4 dressage schools and a couple of road hacks…the amount of work a horse is in, and the type of metabolism he has (hard or easy keeper) has to be taken into consideration…
I’d be testing for PPID as a starting point, as you can’t feed your way out of that causing weight issues.
Many horses who looked good on pounds of COB were working hard enough to earn all that starch
If your guy has only 3 teeth and won’t eat soaked things, I don’t see how COB would work. Crimped oats maybe, but even cracked corn is hard, and even crimped/rolled/steamed barley is pretty hard.
I feel your trashcan pain! What’s currently working and for the longest for my 34yo with PPID is Nutrena SafeChoice Sr, which was fairly recently revamped to include flavor enhancers (specifically for pickier older horses). And then, things got a bit better when I started adding a scoop of Cool Calories on top. None of it’s soaked, mine won’t eat wet food anymore, though he used to 
My 2¢ credits Science/Research.
I’ve been riding since the 1950s (insert 20yr hiatus from ages 15-35) & horse care has changed dramatically.
I believe, for both horses & humans, better medical care & nutrtion has added longevity.
As a kid, saddles weren’t fitted to individual horses unless you had $$$.
Schoolies shared tack mostly interchangeably, with the exception of bits & that not always.
As an 8yo, I rode in a double bridle & have a pic of me at a Schooling show riding an obvious ASB with blinkers on the bridle.
I recall tubeworming & had my horses done this way until the early 2000s. 
Pasteworm was rotated every 8wks, no fecal counts done.
Coggins wasn’t a requirement until the 70s.
Re: the COB diet
I’ve fed my horses oats as their sole grain for 20yrs. Started when I brought my 1st 2 geldings home after boarding for 15yrs. Barns used various mfd pelleted feeds. When my TB lost weight at one place, my vet there advised adding cracked corn. Put weight on & never made him “hot”.
My choice of oats alone was influenced by my German-educated (US-born, college abroad) trainer who fed a 50/50 mix of steam-rolled/steam crimped.
I switched to “racetrack” triple-cleaned whole oats about 19yrs ago & am feeding that now to 2 of my current 3.
24yo Hackney Pony & 20yo TWH.
#3 is a mini who I had to switch from oats at 4yo when he considered laminitis. He gets TC Sr.
Past horses on oats were my 27yo TB, 15yo TWH & 19yo WB.
TB & Walker lost to a trailer accident, WB to anaerobic infection 
All have always gotten complimented by my vets for their condition. Haircoats are soft & shiny year-round, hooves tough & barefoot.
Vet vaccinates annually - at her advice - fecals determine worming protocol.
I do what works for me, others are free to do things their way.
I also have been thinking about this a lot haha.
I wonder about the newer complete feeds, if maybe sometimes more isn’t better. The list of ingredients on the Ultium bag is probably 40+ long.
And I agree on the more problems. Do we just notice the lamenesses more now? Is our idea on what is ‘sound’ drastically different? Or maybe how we ride, breed, and how early we start (and campaign) horses has affected horses more than we realize?
Luckily for him he still has some molars in the back. He just doesn’t have many front teeth.
Last year the vet and I discussed PPID… she felt he didn’t have enough symptoms but I can discuss in a few weeks when coggins are due.
That was my feed of choice for a long, long time growing up in CA. My horses only got a 13 ounce coffee can once a day.
crimped corn, oats, barley pellet ( ?) and molasses and my horses adored it.
It came in 50 pound burlap sacks and smelled like heaven! Moved to the Mid West and couldn’t find it so went to Omolene.
I wonder if they make it anymore??
There are certainly a lot of ingredients in a lot of the “better quality” feeds that aren’t needed by probably most of the population. Horses make their own B vitamins, Vit C, Vit D, most don’t have enough biotin in a serving to matter anyway (but most don’t even need it to start), and a LOT just don’t need all the added pre/probiotics.
that amount doesn’t matter for most horses - not harming, not helping, just basically a treat. It’s the pounds that many horses got back in the old day which is a problem for a lot of horses now.
My suspension is that the quality of grazing may be the most valuable input we’ve lost. In most areas the days of healthy rich soil and the ability to rotate through big fields is limited. Now, I think we’ve got a lot of horses on smaller acreage, strained fields, and soil that’s depleted. This is of course opinion not fact but forage is a much larger portion of the diet than concentrates.
One of the places local to me still makes it. They only have the ‘wet’ molasses version.
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