Non-textured senior feed recommendations

[sascha]

I may be the pedantic one. lol They call it pelleted and extruded. There are other feeds made by the same company that they call textured. Those have more “whole” ingredients in them. You might recognize whole or rolled oats for instance.

There are no “whole*” (unprocessed, uncooked, unpelleted, un-extruded, however we’d like to describe them) ingredients in Senior Active. Purina “textured” feeds on both sides of the border contain recognizable bits of “whole” feed items along with whatever pellets and extrusions that round out those ingredients to make up the nutrition/ingredient profile for the product.

[Montanas_Girl]

I’m talking industry standard, not Purina specific. Feeds are generally lumped into two broad categories - pelleted or textured. Anything that isn’t a true homogenous pellet is referred to as textured.

Anyway, we’ve strayed far from the OP’s request. My primary motive was to clarify that Senior Active is not a complete feed and therefore likely wouldn’t meet her needs.

[sascha]

@Montanas_Girl

Purina Senior Active is technically a textured feed and contains beet pulp shreds.

Yeah, I was and still am responding to this. It does NOT contain beet pulp shreds. Any beet pulp in it is all ground up and processed and packaged into the pellets along with all manner of other ingredients in the pellets.

[sascha]

@Montanas_Girl

My primary motive was to clarify that Senior Active is not a complete feed and therefore likely wouldn’t meet her needs.

The OP never asked for a complete feed. She asked for a senior feed that was not textured.

[JB]

I haven’t assumed the OP needs a complete feed. If she does, then the comments above stand - most Sr feeds are complete, some are not, and some non-Sr feeds are also complete (like TC Complete, and several junior/growth feeds)

Extruded doesn’t equate to textured. Triple Crown Sr Active+ is extruded and totally a pelleted feed.

Purina Senior is pelleted and yes, has the nuggets - maybe that technically makes it “textured”, but it’s not beet pulp, and having used and soaked it, it doesn’t have any chewy piece-parts which is the concern with TC Sr beet pulp shreds that are separate from the pellets.

[Montanas_Girl]

If the horse can’t chew soaked beet pulp, it’s unlikely to effectively chew hay, either.

[sascha]

@Montanas_Girl

If the horse can’t chew soaked beet pulp, it’s unlikely to effectively chew hay, either.

All depends on the size and texture of the shreds. There are loads of posts to be found here and elsewhere on the internet of people finding shreds that they had been feeding no problem to suddenly become a problem from batch to batch with chunks that were too large to just plain wouldn’t soak to complete softness the way they should.

[JB]

I would agree that when the beet pulp crop is fresh,with larger shreds, that the larger amount of bigger, chewier pieces might be a problem. in that case, I’d say hay is a problem too.

But towards the end of the year’s crop, which is where we are now, the beep shreds to tiny. I can tell you the lasts dozen bags I’ve gotten of TC Sr and Sr Gold have “things” with the pellets, unidentifiable as beet pulp shreds, but I know that’s what they are. The soaked product does not have anything I’d consider “large” in terms of a beep piece.

[HappyHorsey]

Thanks all! Sorry I forgot to mention that this horse doesn’t eat much hay anymore, so she eats soaked TC Senior and soaked hay pellets. She eats the hay pellets fine but seems to take more effort to chew on the TC Senior. I’ve seen variations in the TC Senior bags before and the beet pulp shreds are better in some than in others, but I think a pelleted or extruded feed would probably help at this point.

I didn’t even know Triple Crown had an extruded Senior feed available - I’ll definitely look into that. Someone else also recommended the Sentinel feeds, so I’ll have to see if I can get them. Thanks for the suggestions!

[Casey09]

I probably should’ve said it has a different texture.

Even though you can see some beet pulp pieces, it doesn’t have the same heaviness/stickiness that TC Senior has. To me it’s more like dry pellets, but yes, you can see some beet pulp shreds.

The main thing that struck me when I got a bag of Golf was that the texture is different.

[IPEsq]

I think TC Senior Gold soaks into a little bit different texture than regular senior. It is one that can get a little more crumbly. The beet pulp bits are very small.

Purina Senior, like regular TC Senior can tend to get more gummy when soaked, and some horses don’t care for that as much.

I also like the way that Tribute Wholesome Blends Senior soaks, but there are occasionally larger beet pulp pieces plus the dried carrot chunks and stuff that might not work for your horse even though by and large, it’s similar to soaked hay or alfalfa pellets.

How many pounds of each kind of feed are you giving?

[JB]

@IPEsq

I think TC Senior Gold soaks into a little bit different texture than regular senior.

It does soak a bit differently, as TCS is more molasses less oil, and TCSG is less molasses more oil

[ProfessionalAmateur]

I had good luck doing this with the TC SRG for my old guy. While it’s technically not a pellet, it really did soak down to true mush with warm water. Maybe worth a (somewhat pricey) try?

[walktrot]

I posted this on another thread:

Sentinel Active Senior (AS) and Performance LS are similar with 12% fat vs 5.5% in Senior.

Fiber is 15% maximum in AS and 20% max in LS. The diifference is that the minimum fiber in Senior is 17%.

If you look at the feeding directions on the website:

Senior has a Maintenance level of .40-.65 lb/100 lb of body wieght. Light exercise is .45-.65 lb/100 and Moderate is .55-.75

AS and LS don’t have a Maintenance level. Light exercise is .40-.60 and Moderate is .45-.70. They have heavy and very heavy levels.

Senior recommends changing to Active Senior for Heavy exercise and Hard Keepers.

Senior also has Diets with Minimal Hay for Maintenance 1.00 - 1.25 lb/100 body weight. That is where the 5.5% fat comes in. 10 lbs of 12% fat (LS and SA) is way more calories compared to 10 lbs of 5.5% fat (Senior).

All three weigh .85 lb/quart.

My horse was about 1100-1150 lbs. His teeth were in good shape so he didn’t have a problem with hay. That is why he was on LS and AS. I fed him his grain at our original barn but he wasn’t getting enough hay. We retired to a stall with runout at a luxury barn. I kept him on Blue Seal; the barn fed another brand. The BO was meticulous about feeding each horse. She got him back to excellent condition with normal body weight.

I figured he should have about 6 lb/day and there were 3 feedings. That is about 2-1/4 quarts/meal. I got him a pitcher-style scoop and put his name on it. I weighed the grain and marked the scoop. It stayed in his grain bag. If you rely on the usual scoops with the handle you don’t know what you are feeding other than a “scoop” which measures volume. That’s usually okay until they start aging, their teeth start wearing out, and their nutritional needs start to change.

The new barn’s grain room had 2 white boards. One had scheduling - my horse got b’fast grain and supplements, supper grain, and late night grain. The other one had recipes and hay: b’fast was one scoop of grain, one bagged supplements. They hung onto old SmartPak drawers for bagged supplements. The barn changed hands but the new BO stayed with that plan. It sounds more complicated than is. Once I figured out what my horse needed it didn’t make any difference who fed them, as long as they used the white boards.

When I had to put him down in July his body weight was normal and his coat was shiny. He was a bundle of energy. It was tough because he looked so good, but not so bad because he wasn’t a ribby raggedy old man.

I looked at several websites before I decided to stick with Blue Seal. A big reason is the amount of information they post and you can compare products on one screen.