I’m looking for a good for my mare. She’s 8yo 16.3hh and around 1300 pounds. My vet told me to try strategy, but not really loving it. I want her to put on more weight! What food do you recommend? How’s the fat content?
Wrong forum, try horse care
It would help if you post what area of the country you’re in because there are a LOT of good feeds that are only available regionally. Also your horse’s breed and discipline. Photos would also help determine how much weight she really needs.
How’s your hay and how much does she get?
My general rules of thumb when evaluating a feed for my TB are: low starch (under 20% NSC or starch+sugar) and high fiber (above 15%). For a hard keeper the fat content should be at least 10%. Also look at the ingredient list on the feed tag. If it lists groupings like “grain products” and “roughage byproducts” instead of real ingredients, walk away. I won’t feed anything with corn in it, though if it’s far down in the order of inclusion it may be okay.
I think the best line of feed available nationally is Triple Crown. Triple Crown Senior is a great feed for horses (of all ages) who need to gain weight. Strategy is on the starchy side with a moderate fat content, so it’s a decent feed for stock horses in work. I personally feed Seminole, but that’s made at one mill in FL and only distributed in the southeast.
OP, the first thing is to make sure your horse gets as much good quality hay as she can eat. No slow feed nets! Have you had her teeth done? There are many formulas out there that would meet your horse’s needs. You mentioned she is a performance horse, and already 16.3 and 1300 lbs. That’s a big girl. I would not want a horse that big to be “fat,” she is already carrying around a lot of weight, and if she is jumping or galloping, that’s a lot of stress on her legs.
There are lots of different feeds out there - I prefer Triple Crown as a brand. I like a lower NSC feed, and I want the fat + fiber + protein to be at least 30%, and close to 40% is even better. I would look at the Complete, Senior, Low Starch and Training formulas for your horse.
Curious why Ultium Competition hasn’t been mentioned? Starch + sugars total 16% (among the lowest I’ve found), and the FFP formula Palm Beach mentioned above totals 42. It contains Amplify nuggets (Purina’s fat supplement) for additional fat.
I can get it outside of Chicago for $25-$27/bag. I only have one horse, who was getting 6-8# a day, and has backed down to 2#/day (1# plus 1/2 cup Amplify AM/PM).
Open to being educated on other feeds but have always found higher NSC levels…?
I have a 16’3 TB. I tried TC Senior, but at 10 lbs a day and he still wasn’t maintaining his weight…I decided to look for something else.
I tried TC Complete…same story.
I tried Nutrena ProForce Fuel and he maintained weight on 8lbs a day, but his coat and hooves went to crap.
I switched to Seminole Dynasport and he gained on 8 lbs a day in moderate work. He was maintaining on 6lbs a day. He is sidelined at the moment from an injury and is on 4lbs a day since most of his time is spent in a stall chowing down on free choice hay.
His coat and hooves are in awesome shape. The dealer I use is the northern most dealer, just outside of Ashland, VA. It is saving me SOOOO much money.
Another vote for Seminole Dynasport if you can get it in your area. I have my TB on that and free choice O&A and he has gained a ton of weight and looks excellent. I only feed 4 quarts/day of the Dynasport and its saving me so much money. He had been eating 12 quarts/day of some sort of Purina feed at his previous boarding barn and he looked awful.
Strategy is fun to have analyzed. A friend of mine found trace heavy metals and that the amino acid balance was WAAAAAY off, surprising for a higher end feed. I’ve sworn off of processed pellets though and much prefer straights in a good blend. (Alfalfa pellets and rice bran in the US, alfalfa with whole oats in the UK because RB is stupid expensive here… plus a vitamin/mineral balancer and the horses have never looked or felt better.)
Another interesting one worth looking at is Crypto Aero- bagged straights blend instead of a processed pellet, no soy fillers, it looks fabulous. I’d love to try it if I was still in the states.
Ultium is good, I had a horse that could not do alfalfa. Some Purina feeds are not fixed formula, so as long as the guaranteed analysis stays the same Purina can substitute ingredients, but for some reason I think Ultium may be fixed formula. I would not discourage anyone from trying it.
Thanks PalmBeach!
On a bit of a tangent: it seems like in my area, the majority of people are firmly against Purina feeds. Several feed stores won’t even carry it.
Does anyone know why? I’ve been lucky - my gelding has done fantastically on it, and the one rep I personally interacted with was just lovely.
A few other brands have had contamination issues - just wondering why Purina seems to be very unpopular…? TIA.
