Is there any database or list of commercial grains that rates them by the quality of their formulas and ingredients? I know this exists for dog foods. I’ve been feeding the same brand of grain for years, but I feel like I could do better (looking for fewer by-products, less soy, less sugar added). It seems like researching each individual brand and ingredients will be a very time consuming task!
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No, I don’t think so. There’s very little consensus about what constitutes “better” for horse feed–it has more to do with an individual horses needs and owner preferences.
For example, some people think whole grains are “better” despite the high NSC.
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Good points. It’s interesting to see that “trendy” grains marketed by top riders have “wheat middlings” as their top ingredient. Then other brands don’t have ingredients listed at all on their websites. Frustrating!
Wheat mids aren’t bad. They are low starch and high calorie.
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Unfortunately for horses and other livestock, you need to educate yourself on animal nutrition. I recommend Julie Getty’s book Feed Your Horse Like a Horse as a starting point consistent with current best practices, but not necessarily her website which has some pseudo science these days. I did a Coursera on basic horse nutrition several years ago and her book was one of the recommended resources.
The important thing to remember is that the basis of the horses diet is hay, and hay is an artisanal product from millions of small producers and varies even from the same field. Its not possible to have a stable national database of hay. It is possible to learn the types and sources available in your area and make informed choices. You can also get hay tested for nutrients.
Many horses do fine just on hay or grass, but all horses need some kind of attention to their vitamins and minerals.
This is where you get to choose, based on the calorie needs of your horse. Do you feed two ounces of vitamin mineral supplement in a small mash of beet pulp or hay cubes? Or two pounds of ration balancer? Or 4 or 5 pounds of a fortified feed?
Once you make that choice, you can research your local market to find the best bang for your buck. For instance, where I live on Canada I can’t get a really comprehensive ration balancer, but I
have good VMS options so I feed my easy keepers VMS in a mash.
As far as ingredients and guaranteed nutrition, you need to email the feed companies that interest you. You will see that some don’t have fixed ingredients and some may express guaranteed nutrition as a range.
Current best practice says that most horses do better on lower carbohydrate diets, which means lower sugar hay and not a lot of whole grains. In my teenage 1970s, I kept my horse jet fuelled on the most beautiful sweet feed, so nice I ate it for a granola snack at the barn. I was also riding 2 to 8 hours a day, often at a full out gallop (nostalgic sigh) so we worked off the calories. Back then, I loved that the sweet feed contained recognizable oats, corn, and barley. And dry molasses.
A very hard working horse might still be OK on that but in general we have moved to feeds that have much lower carbs, and use other ingredients to provide protein.
In fact, wheat middlings is a very useful ingredient. It’s a high protein, low carb residue from brewing. Other useful protein sources are soy meal and alfalfa meal. Beet pulp is also a great low sugar ingredient. Feed made with these ingredients is probably going to be extruded kibble, but I now know that’s healthier than cracked corn and barley!
As far as hay, I now know that our local grass hay can be up to 25% NSC (non structural carbohydrates) which is crazy high, but also very low protein, so I’ve switched over to commercially grown dry belt Timothy. I have watched other people’s horses get obese and founder on too much local grass hay or even “tested low sugar hay” without any bagged feeds or grains at all. So you really need to get the hay under control first.
In my experience, all the horses I’ve had under my care, including some OTTB, were able to maintsin a nice weight on good hay (Timothy and alfalfa as needed) and a good VMS in a mash. The caveat is that the OTTB were not in heavy work when I cared for them. The horses I’ve had in work were easy keepers.
It really can be overwhelming when you look at all the options available when choosing a feed for your horse.
I am not easily swayed by what others use. I have a brand that I have used for most of my horse owning life (40+ years).
I prefer and stay with this manufacturer because they have proved to me consistently that they produce a quality feed that my horses have always eaten with gusto ( no matter what I feed)and have always done well on . They have been around a long time, are well respected and do a lot of research on all animal nutrition .
With the Ration Balancers it has made it so much easier to get an easy keeper the nutrients they need without the fuss. I don’t do mashes and my horses don’t eat wet feed so they are a good option for me.
Wheat middlings have been part of feeds for a really long time. Many of the “top quality” feeds have them very high in the ingredient list. I’m not sure what “trendy” means - do you have an example?
That is so utterly frustrating for sure
The starting place is the brands you can get. Work down from there
What does “fewer by-products” mean? What does “by-products” mean? Most commercial feeds contain a few to many by-products, but that doesn’t make them unhealthy. Beet pulp is a by-product. Distillers grains are a by-product. Wheat middlings - by-product
What does “less soy” mean? Some horses can’t have much or any soy meal, but are totally fine with soyhulls. Or do you mean soy is farther down the ingredient list? If so, that doesn’t tell you how much is in it, and there could be the same amount, by weight, in a product with it as ingredient #4 as in a product with it as #2.
By products are actually a useful part of modern horse feed formulations.
Horses don’t really need large quantities of whole grain. If you do want to feed whole grain, plain oats are the best choice. Whole corn, barley, wheat, etc are generally higher carbohydrate. They are not a large part of a horses natural diet.
The various by products are useful plant based sources of protein or fiber to carry vitamin mineral fortification and provide more concentrated calories.
Its easy to reach wrong conclusions about horse feed from the discussions over dog food. Dogs naturally eat meat, but lower cost plant byproduct proteins can be used to stretch the more expensive meat and meat byproduct ingredients. Some dog owners may feel this is less natural or less healthy. I haven’t had a dog as an adult so have not needed to form an opinion on that.
When I started learning about horse nutrition I originally wondered about these ingredients but I then found out they are actually helpful.
If you want to really control what your horse eats you can do a VMS in an alfalfa cube or beet pulp mash.
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