Foods for weight gain with kcal listed

Hello everyone,

My mare is looking a bit lean coming out of the winter, and I am looking for something to add to her grain for a little extra calories. She gets mostly free choice hay and Triple Crown Balancer Gold, which had always kept her in good condition prior.

I know years ago someone had made a list of things to add for weight gain that also had the kcal per whatever amount, like per cup or per pound, but I can’t find it. I am not even sure if it was on this site. It contained things like flax, beet pulp, hay pellets, oil, oats, Renew Gold, Max-E-Glow, etc for a general idea. Does anyone know where I could find something similar? Unfortunately extra hay is not an option at this facility. Thanks for any help!

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Is she on the Balancer Gold to keep soy out of her diet? If not, then consider Triple Crown Lite, which is between a ration balancer and a regular fed for calories as-fed, and doing something like that is often les $ than adding significant calories to a ration balancer

But also, will she be getting aces to gras soon? If so, that wil probably start packing on the pounds

Hay pellets are in the 800-1000 cal/lb range, depending on the type of gras, or legume

Oil is around 2000 cal/lb.

here’s one chart, though it’s ingredients, not branded/combined products

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I think you’re looking for the spreadsheet that used to be in a FB group that had a ton of different feeds & feed additives listed with kcal and other info.

They pulled it quite awhile ago, citing challenges in maintaining it. (IIRC.)

I’m not sure if anything exists like that anymore, but most feed manufacturers have gotten the message that owners care about that sort of info. Not like it’s very easy to go to each site and find it!

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If this is what the OP means, this is what we maintained for a while and yes, it was too time-consuming to keep up so we pulled it (and got tired of people complaining when they found an error :roll_eyes:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1AD5MvqpKgP8-gcqHOqEGPGI7M5w-AbkrNZOtesbMDoo/edit?fbclid=IwAR07D-JEkGLkfXcvuhjXp0pk8fgFk_qfaMhu5jnK6Gp1MmsTXr63GO2Af1g&gid=710133234#gid=710133234

Lots of DE info is missing because it wasn’t readily available

It is NOT up to date, but may be good enough for what you want. Most companies still don’t list DE/calories on their sites, you still have to call

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madbarn is a decent database, no idea how often it is maintained or how they get their data though. The five feeds I called the manufacturer to get the DE all were correct on the madbarn website, though.

FeedBank: Equine Feed Nutrition Database | Mad Barn

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I forgot about MB’s! Just know it’s not always accurate either, but probably at least good enough for most purposes

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I’ve used this one :

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://laminitishelp.org/CalorieFeed.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwiOv4K4nfaLAxV9NzQIHYVvEUkQFnoECGoQAQ&wrcdw=1&usg=AOvVaw3oUBM41VkELoLggz4LU9U-

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Thanks so much for the chart! Yes, I was trying to eliminate the soy, because when I got her, she had been on a lower protein diet that aligned more with the Gold. Triple Crown Lite is definitely a good idea and one I hadn’t considered.

This is great! Thanks!

Thank you! I think this is the one, or something very similar.

I’ve never heard of this one but I’m definitely going to check it out!

Does she have kidney issues? The protein difference between regular and Gold Balancer is only 77gm, so not significant

Just cutting in here, but is this truly not significant? Or is it about the source of protein? I do know a horse that was on TC Balancer and switched to the Balancer Gold and lost a decent amount of topline. Went back on the Balancer and the horse looked much better (no change in exercise with that one). So it made me wonder.

I’ve fed both but didn’t feed the Gold for long. Mine lost his fatty pockets on it, but that wasn’t a bad thing.

No, just wanted to try and match the grain more closely to what she came on. The breeder created his own blend at a local feed mill, so I couldn’t buy it via retail.

It seemed like a significant amount to me at the time, but perhaps I was just nitpicking. I will revisit! I don’t know yet how it factors in to the caloric aspect of it yet, though.

An average 1100lb horse in moderate work needs around 700gm of protein. This makes 77gm pretty insignificant, especially considering that 10lb horse is eating around 22lb of hay, and if it averages 10% protein, that’s 998gm. So, 77gm isn’t much at al

Balancer Gold is 1300 cal/lb, regular balancer is 1266

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I swear by Triple Crown Senior Gold for weight gain. Every horse that I’ve ever known has gained weight and condition beautifully on it. I believe it’s 1800 cal/lb, and grain-free!

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