Curious...how many of you make your own feed?

[Chachie]

I was snacking on some sunflower seeds this morning and remembered reading somewhere about a woman who makes her own feed out of sunflower seeds and other things. So it got me to wondering how many people really make their own feed. I don’t mean having a mill mix a special formula; I mean taking their own ingredients and making their own homemade horse feed.
If you do make your own, how does the cost measure up to buying bagged grains? What are the benefits of making your own and the downfalls? How do you make sure that your horses are getting what they need nutritionally?

I’m only asking out of curiosity, not because I have any desire to add more to my already full plate! :winkgrin:

[Jackie_Cochran]

This was back decades ago.

After great dissatisfaction with the prepared feeds I got out the charts of feed values and made up my own feed combinations with: Western oats, local corn (NC), alfalfa pellets, local grass hay (usually fescue) and trace mineral salt. I had very limited grazing, the horses got maybe a half hour a day in the grass paddock.

I did have to go to my local feed mill when my 29 year old finally lost most of his molars. Again I figured out the ratios myself, the mill just ground it for me. This horse survived for many years.

If you do this it is IMPORTANT to weigh the feed (volume measurements do not work well for this system.) I did not mind the extra work because I had 2 horses that were extremely feed efficient along with two horses that needed a lot more calories per pound of food and I was able to customize their rations. It all worked out for many years. PLUS it was a LOT CHEAPER and I knew exactly what was going into their bellies.

[Chachie]

Interesting…what do you do now for feed if you have horses?

[Chachie]

I’m bumping this because I am really interested in knowing if anyone does make their own feed, I don’t mean grow it and harvest it, but mix their own recipe.
Anyone?

[2DogsFarm]

I feed whole oats with added supplements: biotin, MSM, feed-through wormer & BOSS.
So I guess this qualifies as “homemade”.
Cost compares to a premixed feed if I add in the cost of supplements to the bagged oats.
Oats cost $12 for 50#, premixed feed starts around $15 for the same weight.

I recently added Nutrena Empower Boost for my older horse who came out of Winter ribbier than I like to see this year.
right now his mix is 1/3 Boost, 2/3 oats.
I’ll adjust if he seems to need more calories when it gets colder.

Benefits are, like Jackie Cochran said: I KNOW what I’m feeding.
Program is verified by my vet who always compliments me on their condition when he’s here 2X annually for vax.

My pastures are hardly lush, but provide enough grass so I feed considerably less hay as long as there’s grass.
Horses are out 24/7/365 - with access to stalls.
I gauge how much hay to feed by how much is left uneaten when they go out to graze.
Kind of “finish what’s on your plate!” before I add more hay.

[Marla_100]

I started mixing my own to get rid of soy, not because of cost.
I give 2 X per day:
1 lb. Standlee alf/timothy pellets
1 lb. no molasses beet pulp
Accel Lifetime vitamin/mineral 1/2 scoop
1/2 c. ground flax or Omega Horseshine
1 Tb. iodized salt
Hoof Supplement
I cover all w/ water and soak for 10 min.
Plus-

Additional supplements as needed
Plenty of straight Timothy hay and daily grass pasture

[Texarkana]

I “mix” my own ingredients: I begin with a ration balancer or vit/min supplement and add in alfalfa pellets, rice bran, and/or whole oats as needed to maintain condition. I may add in other goodies or supplements depending on the horse.

I like to keep the ingredients separate so I can tailor them to suit the individual horse’s needs. For example, a pony in work isn’t going to need as many calories as a thoroughbred doing the same amount of work. I can make sure everyone is getting the vitamins and minerals required and only feed additional high-quality calories when truly needed.

I also make sure my horses are getting what they need nutritionally by analyzing my forage, and then choosing a vit/min supplment or ration balancer that compliments the forage and fills in any nutritional gaps.

The cost is generally equivalent or less to pre-bagged feeds for easy keepers, although it sometimes can be considerably more expensive for hard keepers who require a lot of calories. It always amazes me that the individual ingredients often cost as much or more than pre-bagged feeds comprised of those same exact ingredients!

My horses are healthy, shiny, and sound. The downfalls (from my point of view) are minimal-- the cost can be discouraging if you have a lot of hard-keepers. Mixing ingredients may be time-prohibitive for some larger barns… I don’t think it’s a big deal in my situation, but someone feeding a boarding barn of 35 horses may think differently!

[Bluey]

When we were training race colts, we bought whole oats in bulk, some times we raised our own.
We ran them thru a roller mill and we fed straight rolled oats, alfalfa hay and maybe one supplement like Clovite or 407 if a horse needed it.

Raised, trained and ran many horses well on that.

Today, there is so much more research and some of the better companies do make excellent feeds, so why bother learning all that and then still maybe come up short?

For us, unless competing, a broodmare or horse with special needs, most horses are in light work today and don’t need to be fed grain or supplements but do fine on good quality hay and pasture where available.

[JoZ]

For the most part, I make my own. Last year I went to a commercial feed, and wasn’t crazy about it. Bizarrely enough, I missed the mad scientist feeling of concocting exactly what I wanted.

The real reason I started making my own was that most of my horses are easy keepers. No matter what feed I looked at, it required being fed at a rate of 3 to 8 pounds per day. Even the ration balancers recommended a pound per day. And some of my crew really could do with a cup per day!

So I started with a good vitamin/mineral, the daily dosage of which was a mere 2 ounces. Everyone got that. The other ingredients varied by horse. And also varied by year, as I tried different things. The list includes (but is not limited to LOL): oats, beet pulp, alfalfa pellets, orchard grass pellets, Nutraflax, rice bran, brewer’s yeast, lysine, probiotics, etc. In recent years, I replaced several of those things with Haystack Special Blend pellets, which have both the forage items and the fat items included. The easiest keepers got a cup or so of orchard grass pellets and a smattering of oats for flavor, along with the vitamin/mineral. The hard keepers got everything in the cupboard!

[Jackie_Cochran]

[QUOTE=Chachie;7774729]
Interesting…what do you do now for feed if you have horses?[/QUOTE]

I no longer have horses, I have MS and it got too much for me. If some miracle happened and I could handle keeping horses on my land I would do the same with the grain, but I would investigate the non-alfalfa forage pellets to get the protein percentage down since I never had my horses in HEAVY work.

One reason I switched is when I realized that I was paying grain prices for the 10% of the ration that was molasses in the made up feeds. The molasses is used a lot to hide the fact that the grain may be DUSTY instead of clean. I consider dusty grain to be of lower quality than clean, non-dusty grain.

It was funny with my easy keepers, their ration was one to three handfuls of oats, a handful or two of alfalfa, and for the COLD months I might add one to three handfuls of whole corn, and an extra few handfuls of oats, along with 12 lbs. a day or more of grass hay (no pasture in the winter). They were fat, shiny, and ready to zoom down the trails.

[Alagirl]

My uncle grew his own grains and hay.
So we fed oats, barley and corn as available or needed. ran the grains through the mill to break it up.
Added minerals, hay from the farm, basic grass hey.

beet pulp for some, added (corn) oil for others.
30 years ago supplements started to come into the picture, a bid Biotin for the hooves, Vitamin E, those were basically the first ones to make an appearance.

We never fed pellets, they simply did not have a good reputation back then.
plus, since my uncle was in the business of raising grain, he had his product evaluated on a regular basis.
Plus we bedded on straw.

you have to be a little more on the ball when you go this rout, but I think it allows you more control over what goes into the horse, no different than cooking from scratch vs boxed meals.

One time I can recall we had a bought feed mix in the barn, as one of the mares was a picky eater and tended to go off the feed when things got to be too much. it had some molasses added, but I cannot recall seeing the stuff after that again.

[stargzng386]

[QUOTE=JoZ;7777531]
For the most part, I make my own. Last year I went to a commercial feed, and wasn’t crazy about it. Bizarrely enough, I missed the mad scientist feeling of concocting exactly what I wanted.

The real reason I started making my own was that most of my horses are easy keepers. No matter what feed I looked at, it required being fed at a rate of 3 to 8 pounds per day. Even the ration balancers recommended a pound per day. And some of my crew really could do with a cup per day!

So I started with a good vitamin/mineral, the daily dosage of which was a mere 2 ounces. Everyone got that. The other ingredients varied by horse. And also varied by year, as I tried different things. The list includes (but is not limited to LOL): oats, beet pulp, alfalfa pellets, orchard grass pellets, Nutraflax, rice bran, brewer’s yeast, lysine, probiotics, etc. In recent years, I replaced several of those things with Haystack Special Blend pellets, which have both the forage items and the fat items included. The easiest keepers got a cup or so of orchard grass pellets and a smattering of oats for flavor, along with the vitamin/mineral. The hard keepers got everything in the cupboard![/QUOTE]

What vitamin/mineral do you use? I currently have my horse on a ration balancer but he has moved to a barn with a lot of grass and I don’t want to feed him a pound a day.

[dangerbunny]

Since I like the majority of my horse’s diet to be forage, I started getting my hay tested and balancing the vitamins and minerals to it. I use Feedxl to help figure the amounts and order the minerals from horsetech. The mineral mix is fed with ricebran and a bit of flax and BOSS.