A horse doesn’t have to NEED a Sr feed, to benefit from it.
5-6lb for the average horse is a little more than a small % of feeds, and less than some others, all in non-senior categories. It’s really not a lot.
You CAN feed a lot, when forage intake is reduced, because it is a complete feed. But you don’t have to feed it that way, and you shouldn’t use it that way if the horse is eating at good bit of forage.
Well according to the vet and the nutritionist you are wrong. Senior feeds (in general) are meant to be a fairly complete feed for a horse that has trouble chewing or digesting roughages. That is why it is a waste of money to feed what you think they need vs what is recommended by the manufacturer (quoting the vet and nutri).
And in my horses situation, the results were quick and positive. So I’ll stick with the expert’s advice.
No, I’m not wrong. Read the labels. Just because they are designed so that you CAN feed higher amounts to the horse that has trouble chewing or digesting roughages, doesn’t mean you can’t or shouldn’t feed them to horses who don’t have trouble with forage.
Complete feeds have 2 different sets of feeding instructions:
1 - horses who are eating normal amounts of forage
2 - horses who are eating far too little, or no forage
Triple Crown Sr, for example:
Purina Equine Sr - too big to screen shot, but there’s a feeding section for " FEEDING WITHOUT FORAGE" and one for “” FEEDING WITH FORAGE" Feeding without forage starts at 13.5lb for a 1000lb horse at maintenance, and feeding with forage starts at 7lb.
Nutrena Pro Force Senior - when fed without hay/pasture, feed 11.3-13.5lb for a 1000lb horse. When fed WITH hay/pasture, 4.5-6.8lb for that same 1000lb horse.
No guessing. It’s following directions. They aren’t unreasonable amounts to feed the horse who is eating forage.
So what that your horse is doing better on Ultium Gastric Care. It’s a good feed, with Outlast in it, a lower feeding rate than some feeds (but not all), and some horses do much better on it than others they’d been on.
The same can be said about a whole lot of other feeds too, including horses who do better on something other than Ultium-anything
But at a minimum of 5lb for a 1000lb horse in light work, that’s more than the minimum of 4.5lb for the same horse eating Nutrena Pro Force Senior.
I believe my vet and the nutritionist.
This applies to every single feed there is. It’s not special to senior feeds. I showed you the feeding rates for some complete Sr feeds, and you’re feeding MORE than the minimum rate than one of them. Or at least you SHOULD be feeding more if you’re going by what is recommended by the manufacturer.
I’m not sure where the disconnect is.
That’s fine. But there are benefits to feeding a senior feed besides just dentition problems. Also, senior feeds are not all equal. Neither are vets for that matter…
Do what’s best for your horse. But many, many vets and nutritionists will recommend a feed like triple crown senior even when dentition isn’t compromised, which is why it was mentioned to the OP.
Ok, my last time responding to you. I know the same applies to all types of feeds. I’m specifically addressing my feed change from senior and the reason why. Follow the directions on the bag or as advised by your vet. Goodbye.
I never took any issue or exception or disagreed with your switch in feeds, I have no idea why you seem to think I did.
I feed extruded soy bean meal- 30% protein, no sugar.
Good grief. LOL. Maybe feed bags should be labeled by NSC and protein %. And nothing else.
Just some random thoughts: Older horses get tired of eating the same thing day in and day out, for years on end, and one day, they just stop eating it and that’s it. You can disguise it with oil and molasses, etc, or do some research and make a switch. I’ve actually done both. Switching is easier on those feeding the horse. I would suggest making a 1-800 call to the nutritionist of the brand your vet recommended and discuss the feed options they have that would fit your situation. You would be looking for calorie count, fat and fiber count per pound of the feeds (high fat, high fiber, high calorie). Being me, I would then take it a step further and look at competing brands being sold in your area, and make a few more phone calls to make sure I was getting the best fit possible for my horse.
I fed TC Senior for years. It works. The TC Gold Version works even better. What also works in the NY/New England area is Poulin ETEC Fibre Max–a close recipe to TC senior, but less expensive that Triple Crown because it is locally milled. One pound of grain across two feedings per day is not a lot of grain and may not be meeting your horse’s caloric needs, Follow the manufacturer’s feeding suggestions. TC Senior and Poulin Fibre Max are beet-pulp based feeds and do not contain corn, oats or barley in their content. They are made with molasses, but due to the lack of actual grain in their content, their NSC is fairly low.
After switching to a more palatable grain product, another option would be to add a fat supplement like Cool Calories to your horse’s diet if your horse still needs more help… You can get this in SmartPaks, shipped to your barn, to be added to the feed by the staff. We have seen a big difference in weight gain by the OTTB’s recently off the track who are now in our barn with this product when the high fat/fiber/calorie feeds still can’t get the weight on. It works.
And another option to explore would be adding a prebiotic/probiotic-type of supplement to the food, designed to help maintain a healthy gut and help the horse more fully digest and utilize the feed and hay he or she is consuming. Probios has products for this, as does SmartPak, Gut, etc. My oldster has been on RationPlus for years, and now that they are discontinuing the product, he will be switching to one of the SmartDigest products once my last bottle of RP runs out. His diet is based on Poulin Fibre Max, he is fed 3 times a day, and we get plenty of compliments on his ability to hold his weight. He is 29 years old.
Good luck with your horse, OP!
I also have been advised recently by a vet (noted research professor in the area equine nutrition) that a senior feed is not the way to go as far as a horse that is having no trouble consuming a proper amount of hay and that feeding a more calorie dense concentrate would be more advantageous.
Triple Crown Sr Gold is 1800 cal/lb, surpassed only by Ultium
TC Sr regular is in the low 1500 cal/lb, which is a common range for a lot of feeds, not just Srs.
You can’t make broad assumptions about any category of feed, whether it’s senior, growth, performance, etc.
Every respected, Phd Nutritionist I know and know of, as opposed to a plethora of “I took a course at Guelph” and “I got my education from a feed company” and “I took nutrition courses in school” who calls themselves a “nutritionist”, has no problem suggesting a good quality senior feed for a horse who has no problem eating ample amounts of hay or grass.
Triple Crown Sr is nearly identical in the GA and ingredients as their old Growth formula, because they increased the oats which raised the NSC. Therefore, the Sr is a totally suitable feed for young growing horses.
It’s not the ONLY way to go, but “not the way to go” is not a valid statement.
There are far too many normal healthy chewing horses eating a senior feed and are very happy with good weight and energy and eating the amount listed on the label.
Comparing Calories | Tribute Equine Nutrition
Triple Crown Senior, listed at 1546 cal/lb, is more than almost every one of the Tribute feeds
If a horse - senior, growing, performing, pregnant, breeding, anything - needs to maximize calories and minimize volume, then there are some feeds that are 1600+/lb and are a better way to go.
Sorry I even bothered. I bow to you oh goddess of equine nutrition.
These aren’t my opinions. I’ve provided some facts around things which disprove some of the claims made.
Someone may FEEL that a senior feed isn’t the way to go for a horse fully capable of eating and digesting forage, and they’re entitled to that. But to claim you shouldn’t, that you need more calorie-dense feeds, that they aren’t suitable, those aren’t correct because horses themselves have proven them untrue
I think people forget that vets are human and there is more than one way to put weight on a horse. 
There are a lot of good feed products on the market. There are a lot of fair to middling products on the market. There are a lot of products that are only suitable for specific purposes. No human being is going to be an expert on every single product. But what happens is these generalizations get made, often by “experts,” and it leads to a lot of misinterpretations.
Several times on this thread I’ve started typing out some of the wacky feed advice I’ve gotten from “experts” over the years, but it ends up turning into a novel.
Amen to that @Texarkana Vets are not my first go-to for nutritional advice, not when they think foals don’t need anything more than hay/grass, not when they have a cow over 30% protein in a ration balancer (or think no adult horse need a feed with more than 10% protein), and more which prove they don’t understand the bigger picture (or sometimes even the smaller picture) Recommending 40% NSC feeds for foals despite the research proving a link between high NSC diets and DOD issues, telling people with foals with physitis or horses with laminitis to put them on the crappiest hay they can find, says they are working off 30yo information.
Too many people put too much emphasis on the category or marketing of a feed and ignore the actual details that are the only things that matter.
When the person who gives me the advice is a researcher at a major university, many times over keynote speaker at the Mid-Atlantic Nutrition Conference and is a noted on more equine nutrition studies than I can count, I tend to not think she’s talking out of her ass.
This whole conversation started because the OP’s vet recommended alfalfa pellets. That is a good suggestion for weight gain, but her horse won’t eat them. If the horse won’t eat them, that is not a solution for her.
Luckily, alfalfa is not the only way to put weight on a horse.
A high calorie Senior feed with quality ingredients was mentioned as an alternative. The OP’s vet “doesn’t like” Senior feeds unless the horse has no teeth. That is a generalization that may be accepted by some, but certainly isn’t gospel truth. That’s how the conversation changed direction.
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