What would you recommend feeding a weanling? Our new wee lass just came home at 5mo. Her breeder had her on Strategy Pro Formula GX. We bought a bag so we have it to transition her to something else if recommended. Our older mare is on Purina Enrich Plus and alfalfa pellets. Both have ad lib hay. Thank you!
Ration balancer.
How many pounds of Strategy is she on, and what was her hay/grass situation then vs now?
Most foals don’t need more calories than a ration balancer, fed appropriately for their age, which is around 2-3lb for most average horse foals. Adding a small bit of alfalfa pellets to keep in the mix is perfect, as it lets you bump that up pretty quickly to a few pounds if a growth spurt makes her too thin, then back down to a handful when that need is over
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Her previous feeding situation was 3.5lbs Strategy daily with grass turnout and 1 flake of alfalfa. At our place she will have 24/7 Bermuda/timothy hay and grass turnout starting in the spring.
The recommended feeding rate from purina for the Strategy Gx is 7.5 lbs/day for a 300 lb weanling, and goes up by weight. I can’t get the webpage to copy correctly here, but the feeding directions are on it.
If you have good quality forage she maintains her weight and growth on, a ration balancer will provide the necessary nutrients in that 2-3 lb daily feeding rate JB mentioned. Enrich Plus is Purina’s balancer, so will reflect the baseline nutrition in the Strategy without excess calories.
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agree, we have have two weanlings in the last five years, neither was given more than a ration balancer, no grain at all, none. For both we had to limit their hay by weighing each feeding. The current one is now two and stands 15.1
both are of older line Morgan blood which is notorious for being of slow metabolism which makes us more concerned about undesired weigh increases
even the older six old Morgan mare who is of more modern lines only gets a ration balancer and hay is weighed other wise she can/will pick up weight fast.
The only horses here that get any feed here (strategy healthy edge) are those that are over 22 years
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All I can say is that it depends and all you can do is try her on the RB. Enrich Plus is what I feed but my youngster ( a QH) needed more then that until he was 4 1/2. Despite free choice hay and good grass he just needed what a fortified feed provided.
He doesn’t even " need" anything now 
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I tend to like Triple Crown’s 30 a bit more than Purina’s Enrich Plus due to the higher amount of vitamin E. It also requires less per feeding. I feed that with alfalfa pellets for youngsters along with supplemented Rejuvenaide.
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I’m a huge TC fan, but I (and many others) disagree with their feeding recommendations for foals/weanlings and yearlings. Some of the reps for TC, including those with PAS education, don’t know why they made the directions .5-.75lb for a horse weanling. Their formula is similar enough to others, including Purina, that it makes zero sense to have such a low feed amount
IMVHO, TC Balancer should be fed in the 2-3lb range for a weanling, just like Enrich.
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I generally feed 1.5-2 pounds of TC 30 which still allowed me to feed a pound or two more per feeding of alfalfa pellets which I like over feeding 3 lbs of Enrich.
TC Balancer is 4.4 ppm Se. 3 pounds of this product will provide almost 6 mg Se. I am generally not comfortable advising horse owners to feed much more than 3 mg Se/day (above and beyond forage, which usually provides very little Se outside select areas of the country) without blood tests confirming the horse is Se deficient. TC’s nutritionists and formulators don’t recommend more than 2 pounds of their balancer per day - which provides about 4 mg of Se - for any class of horses, probably for the very same reason. This of course doesn’t mean there aren’t horses out there who might very well need higher feeding rates, but it’s not something that should be recommended across the board.
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Ohhh, great point, I had totally forgotten they have a higher Se than most, thanks!
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No problem! They’re also a little higher in other trace minerals than most balancers, which is reflected in the slightly lower feeding rate.
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So, I’ll ask you this question then: I’ve heard some folks say that extra copper and zinc are needed when feeding closer to the 1lb rate (for fatties, lol!) of TC Ration Balancer. Would you agree with that statement or no? TIA!
Well, yes and no. Unless the horse is very large and/or in heavy work (in which case it would probably need more than 1 pound of Balancer to maintain its weight), no, additional copper and zinc isn’t likely to be necessary to meet the horse’s basic requirements. However, some horses do require slightly higher than average levels of nutrients to support optimum health, and those horses often benefit from being fed at slightly above the minimum recommended level of Balancer.
There has been a fad in recent years of adding large amounts of copper and zinc to otherwise balanced equine diets. This started from the ECIR group, which recommends all kinds of questionable practices. It is based on a misunderstanding of mineral balances in animal nutrition. People took one bit of factual information - that iron competes with copper and zinc for absorption - and incorrectly assumed that adding more copper and zinc would counteract that problem.
In actuality, most metal ions (copper, zinc, iron, manganese, sulfur, etc.) are absorbed through the same pathway. The intestinal lining only has so many metal ion transporters. Once those transporters are saturated, no more can be absorbed. Adding more of any particular mineral won’t create more transport channels and can exacerbate the issue. Chelated trace minerals - minerals chemically bonded to other molecules - address this problem by offering alternative absorption pathways. Not all chelates are created equal, though. Some, like the polysaccharides, make little to no difference because the bonds aren’t particularly strong and are broken in the acid environment of the stomach. Amino acid chelates (you will see these on the ingredient list as zinc methionine complex, etc.), on the other hand, are strong enough to survive the stomach and make it into the small intestine intact. There, the chelated mineral can be absorbed across specialized amino acid transporters and therefore are unaffected by high levels of other metal ions in the diet.
TLDR summary: Instead of adding more and more trace minerals to the diet, horse owners should use a form of copper and zinc that isn’t affected by the presence of antagonists. Many feeds and supplements do include these chelates but at very low inclusion rates, so you have to use a bit of detective work to make sure you’re getting your money’s worth in this respect.
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That all depends on their individual need, and how low the forage is. Pretty much every ration balancer I’ve seen has enough cu and zn to exceed by at least a little, the required intake for the weight of horse the recommended amount is fed to. But that doesn’t mean it’s enough for that horse. If you struggle with hoof quality and/or excessive coat fading (especially if the coat feels/looks really rough, and/or chronic skin issues, consider adding cu/zn and give it 6 months (or a year if you’re working with excessive fading) . It’s not going to hurt, adding a serving of any of the horse products
I think it depends LOL I don’t disagree that the chelates are “better”. But I have 2 horses here who prove that without the polysaccharide products I use, they get skin crud. I don’t use a ton of it, a bit less than 250mg Cu and around 3x that of Zn. It may be possible to use significantly less of a chelate, I’ve never tried.
THANK YOU for the in depth reply, that was exactly what I was looking for! And I would assume that a product like TC Balancer IS one of those products where one is “getting their money’s worth in this respect”??
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I always appreciate your response, JB, thank you very much!
Triple Crown Balancer ingredient list:
Soybean Meal, Wheat Middlings, Calcium Carbonate, Monocalcium Phosphate, Magnesium Oxide, Heat Stabilized Rice Bran, Soybean Oil, Molasses, Ground Flaxseed, Salt, Lignosulfonate, Sodium Bicarbonate, Selenium Yeast, Butyric Acid, Zinc Oxide, Peppermint Essential Oil, Saccharomyces Cerevisiae Yeast Extract, Saccharomyces Cerevisiae Active Dry Yeast, Hydrated Sodium Calcium Aluminosilicate, Dried Enterococcus Faecium Fermentation Product, Dried Lactobacillus Acidophilus Fermentation Product, Dried Trichoderma Longibrachiatum Fermentation Product, Dried Bacillus Licheniformis Fermentation Extract, Saccharomyces Cerevisiae Yeast Culture, Vitamin E Supplement, DL-Methionine, Chromium Proprionate, L-Threonine, L-Lysine, Dried Kelp, Zinc Sulfate, Manganese Sulfate, Zinc Hydroxychloride, Ascorbic Acid, L-Leucine, Manganese Hydroxychloride, Vitamin B12 Supplement, Lecithin, Natural & Artificial Flavors, Fenugreek Seed, Magnesium Proteinate, Niacin Supplement, Copper Hydroxychloride, Copper Sulfate, Biotin, Thiamine Mononitrate, Vitamin A Supplement, Beta-Carotene, Dried Bacillus Subtilis Fermentation Product, Cobalt Proteinate, Pyridoxine Hydrochloride, Riboflavin Supplement, D-Calcium Pantothenate, Cobalt Sulfate, Vitamin D3 Supplement, Choline Chloride, Folic Acid, Menadione Sodium Bisulfite Complex, Ethylenediamine Dihydroiodide.
Like a lot of feed companies, TC uses both inorganic (zinc sulfate, copper sulfate) and organic (zinc hydroxychloride, copper hydroxychloride) trace mineral sources. They do not use amino acid chelates. Hydroxychloride mineral forms, like the polysaccharides, are more bioavailable than sulfates but do not address the potential interference from other metal ions the way amino acid chelates do.
Triple Crown products are very high quality, and I think they are certainly worth the money (disclaimer: I work for a company that is loosely affiliated with TC). If antagonistic minerals are a big concern, though, I prefer/recommend providing copper and zinc at NRC recommended levels in amino acid chelate form.
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Fascinating and I could carry on here for a bit longer, but I don’t want to derail the OP’s thread. In any case, thank you once again, and if there’s any reading material or further information that anyone on this thread or I could benefit from I’d love to see it. For the OP, so that you won’t be too upset with me (sorry!) I’ve had many babies over the years, and the base of my nutrition for them once weaned has been a ration balancer. I have used other products, but for decades now my “go to” has been Triple Crown products. I can count on the quality, my horses/ponies always look/feel great and get compliments. On the rare occasion when I’ve had any sort of question or issue, it was answered/handled immediately and without fanfare. I wish you the very best with your newest acquisition. Please take before and after, and along the way photos and post. It will be so fun to see his/her progress and growth.
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This may be way more technical and longer than you wanted (it’s an entire master’s thesis that Texas A&M has made publicly available), but the author does a very good job of explaining the various mechanisms for trace mineral absorption and reviewing the research literature available: https://oaktrust.library.tamu.edu/bitstream/handle/1969.1/173410/DICKSON-THESIS-2018.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y
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