Depends on how the “specialty feed” is formulated to be fed. A senior type feed is more fiber, and is designed be fed in larger quantities usually, but a feed designed for racehorses or eventers that put in a lot more miles and burn off a lot of calories is a different type of feed most horses don’t need. Our racehorses have haynets, so are never short in that department, but they need the calories for the energy they burn daily and when racing. My daughter is doing almost too good a job with them, even with the exercise they are getting daily, some look a little chubby, but if you poked them with you’re finger, you’d likely hurt your finger, they’re solid muscle.
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I grew up in a 30-ish horse barn and was there for years and years. For a good bit of those 25-ish years, feed was delivered via a chute into the feed room, basically a COB mix, and horses were fed 1-2 3-qt scoops 1-2 times a day, ponies fed half that. 1-2 hours turnout, horses were either lesson horses (most of them) or privately owned, so work was moderate at best, most was less than that due to being more beginner-friendly lessons. Alfalfa wasn’t a thing.
The point being - while it may not have been done where you were, CA is very different from a great deal of the rest of the country
I don’t disagree, unfortunate reality of a lot of boarding barns is that hay isn’t ad-lib, because they can’t afford it. In order TO afford it, board would be so high people couldn’t, or wouldn’t board there.
Beep isn’t common in balancers at all. My guess is Purina added it to this one for more fiber for the oldies, which is interesting since it’s fed in such small amounts. But I don’t know for sure. However, it’s a very uncommon ration balancer ingredient
They CAN be fed in a lot higher amounts, but they also have “normal” amounts for horses who are eating enough hay/grass. As well, not all Sr feeds are complete feeds, so you shouldn’t feed those higher amounts
you wouldn’t hurt a finger poking the belly in the rib area, one of the areas used to determine BCS. That gets covered in fat, not a lot of muscle 
A well-muscled horse looks different from a horse who’s just chubby The BCS system doesn’t look at the areas that are well-muscled to determine score
Been gone from there over 30 years now. I am sure they feed just like everywhere else now in full board barns. I can only speak for the barn I was at. We had over 100 boarded horses there so that is what it was like for the 13+ years I was there. I worked as barn help off and on all those years so I was aware of the feeding as well.
I can’t believe I’m not the only one with these problems 
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