The inability to see or accept that you’re hammering away at a screw is certainly frustrating. I feel for the horse.
Re Vet… if she’s in a hay desert, what are the chances vets aren’t up on cutting edge equine nutrition in that area as well? Which is where astute COTHers come in… but again, only if one is willing to heed advice and that includes giving the recovery of condition the time it requires.
sigh
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Sure it does 
It has calcium and protein and copper and potassium and phosphorous and many other nutrients. The problem is it also comes with a high sugar content, which can negate some of the value of those nutrients, causing issues directly in the stomach, being sent of out the stomach faster than food normally does, getting to the hind gut where all that sugar isn’t meant to be digested, sitting and fermenting and creating an acidic environment which sets up a bacterial imbalance, and overall nutrient absorption is degraded all around.
Quit feeding it. Especially getting 13 pounds of sweet feed a day. If you are feeding that much, a 50 pound bag is only going to last you (at most) 4 days. And then you’re spending $20 every 4 days … that adds up. Again, even though hay is expensive, it’s still cheaper than feed.
Agree. Even $10/50lb is still $400/ton, and that usually buys some pretty decent hay.
If you do want to supplement the hay with some kind of grain, look into Renew Gold or Purina Amplify (or Purina Ultium, which does have the Amplify in it). Both are high fat options if you can get them in your area.
RG and Amplify are fat supplements. They are an addition to a feed/grain/concentrate, not a first step.
Ultium would definitely be light years better than some cheap sweet feed. Still need at least 50% more hay though.
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If she’s planning to replace the hard keeper with a mini or a donkey, she’s got a lot to learn about THEIR specific nutritional needs before making that purchase.
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Most generic sweet feeds are going to be loaded with sugar and molasses, which really is not healthy for most horses and is not going to benefit them nutritionally.
Exactly why I said sweet feed has no nutritional value. Just summed it up shorter than your description.
I didn’t tell the OP they were a first step?? I specifically said they could be a supplement to hay.
They DO have nutritional value. Just because they are high in sugar doesn’t mean they don’t also have additional value. Low value is a better description. But they are not no-value feeds.
I didn’t tell the OP they were a first step?? I specifically said they could be a supplement to hay.
I must have mis-read how you worded things. I read "with some kind of grain, look into Renew Gold or Purina Amplify ", as implying that RG and PA were examples of “grain”.
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People use “sweet feed” the same as they incorrectly use “grain.” They really should be calling it hard feed or concentrate. My neighbor is older, and she calls everything “sweet feed” or “pellets,” and uses “grain” as a noun and a verb to mean “feed.” She’s helped me out a few times and I was forced to call TC Senior “sweet feed” because that is the term she uses and I only had TC Senior (sweet feed) and TC Lite (pellets) for her to choose from. So yeah, my horses got “grained” with sweet feed or pellets that really don’t contain much, if any, grain.
This is what the OP said she feeds. What would YOU call it then?
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It is touted as a “ruminant feed”. I hadn’t come across a feed before that is advertised as designed for all livestock! $10 for 50 lbs certainly isn’t breaking the bank.
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There have been all around livestock feeds around forever. They are not the greatest quality products, as proven by the price.
And if you read the Q & A on the TSC website, you’ll see it is a 42% NSC. Certainly not what most horses need!
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Producer’s Pride, Country Acres, Atwoods (super cheap, super un-fortified), Sprout, and more, all have a feed called “All Stock”. All of them (that I’ve ever seen) list horses, cattle, sheep, and goats, so not truly touted as a ruminant feed
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If the horse is IR, wouldn’t that high nasc actually make him worse, iow less likely to gain?
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Well, let me put it this way. There are not too many horses, even horses in really hard work, that need an NSC like that. And that even includes Amish driving horses, who are doing 50 miles a weekend.
Years ago, like 20 years ago, many feeds were in that ball park because we didn’t know better. Research showed that fat was a better source of energy for horses as opposed to high starch cereal grains, and most commercial feed companies started the process of moving away from cereal grains, and started adding fat instead.
The problem with adding fat and using better quality ingredients that are better for the horse is that they are more expensive, and many times people don’t want to pay more for a higher quality feed because they believe (incorrectly) that all feeds are equal. They also do not break the price of feed down per pounds fed, as opposed to overall bag cost. I have seen very few instances where if good quality hay is being fed you are feeding outrageous amounts of a premium feed.
If the OP is actually feeding this horse 14 lbs. a day of Producer’s Pride, I can almost 100% guarantee her that she would save money by feeding the best quality hay she can find and a premium feed like Triple Crown Senior. Plus, she would be doing the horse a HUGE favor by putting less grain in his body.
I don’t know that the high NSC would make him less likely to gain weight, but you are setting him up perfectly for either colic or metabolic issues, and possibly antagonizing any situation with ulcers. 14 lbs. a day of a high NSC feed is just trouble no matter how you look at it. I have horses who would be laminitic within days of being fed something like this.
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High sugar meals can create a rise in leptin, which is the satiety hormone. This can cause them to consume less forage. This can lead to weight loss (or no weight gain), so the mistake is to increase the grain, and you can see how that goes.
but you are setting him up perfectly for either colic or metabolic issues, and possibly antagonizing any situation with ulcers. 14 lbs. a day of a high NSC feed is just trouble no matter how you look at it. I have horses who would be laminitic within days of being fed something like this.
Yep, it’s a disaster waiting to happen.
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I usually call products by the correct name. What would YOU call it then?
If you’d read the thread, you wouldn’t have to ask. Do you have anything useful to contribute?
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My horse Yo was ir, and a hard keeper who packed it away and didn’t look like he did, because it was the wrong food… until I learned better.
My cat is diabetic and acromegaly, meaning he has a tumor on his pituitary. Low carb cat food has made such a difference, and yet he packs it away, because his body still thinks it’s hungry, because in a way it is…
Nutrition is such a mysterious, too much misunderstood, but vital area of animal stewardship imo
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IKR. Like now they are saying probiotics may be useless to many people and go right through you. As I look at a shelf full of yogurt in my fridge.
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Unfortunately this thread is similar to many others where the OP comes in asking questions and when they don’t like
the unanimous answers, they disappear. It’s a shame because this was a young horse owner that could learn a lot
from our members. She disappeared right about the time people were all in agreement that she needed to feed
more hay. And she needed to switch out the concentrates to a better quality feed. Oh Well, we tried.
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And people called me mean
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FWIW, I really don’t think so. The OP asked about Sentinal and seemed interested in giving her horses better quality feed. I hope she’s still reading and hopefully starting to understand how the dollars break out. I thought @sarah.woodard16 took the feedback she was getting well. It’s tough to hear you’re wrong. We all had to start somewhere.
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