Thanks for the suggestion, cnd, I have used Cool Calories in the past for weight gain & did have some success with it for that goal. I had switched to the rice bran and then the flax bc I liked the added omegas & had nicer results.
As an update, thanks to @tabula_rashah, I just ordered bucket o’ flax from SmartPak – theirs is the brown flax (I can’t remember the difference, but I do remember looking it up before & golden is slightly advantageous, but at this point, compromises have to be made) but it is still stabilized so I’ll give that a try for 90 days. I can’t afford to feed it at the same rate as the TC flax (which I was using for fat as well), but it will still give us the extra omega 3s I want. If the horse needs more calories, I can bump up his alfalfa pellets. In 3 months, my grass will be back, thank goodness.
@Texarkana, as a follow up on the Empower, I was about to settle on that, but when I went to Nutrena’s website to check some details, I realized that what my SS carries is the Empower Topline, not the Empower Boost (I didn’t realize there were different kinds, but I did flip over bags in the store yesterday to check fat levels). If they had the Boost, which is the rice bran/flax/22% fat thing, I’d have grabbed that & I think you’re right, it might have been great, but the 5% fat Topline didn’t really look like what I was looking for. But next time I’m at TSC, I’ll see what they have too, ours at least used to sell all the Nutrena products.
Thanks again, everyone, you were all very helpful with guiding tired brain to a workable interim solution & now I also have several other alternative backups if I need them. Hopefully this can also help others who might run into shortages.
