Nutrition for horses on hay only diet

[KCSLK]

My horses live on what is essentially a dry lot, so their diet is almost entirely hay. I haven’t tested their hay (and likely won’t be able to do so since it comes from different fields and cuttings). Is there anything I should change about their feeding program to account for the pasture grass vs hay difference, in addition to the Vitamin E I already added?

Horse 1 — about 20 pounds of a more mature timothy/alfalfa mix hay (mostly timothy) + 1 pound ration balancer (currently Nutrena Empower) + about 550 IUs natural Vitamin E

Horse 2 — about 10 pounds of the more mature timothy/alfalfa mix hay (mostly timothy) + about 12 pounds alfalfa hay + 2 ounces vitamin & mineral supplement (MannaPro ShoGlo) + about 550 IUs natural Vitamin E

Would Horse 1 be ok on just Shoglo instead of a ration balancer since there is a small amount of the higher protein alfalfa in the mixed hay? Any extra calories are definitely unnecessary ;). Horse 2 is gaining weight on that much alfalfa so likely will somewhat reduce that soon, but is there any concern over the higher Ca:P ratio feeding alfalfa hay? It is still within what I’ve read to be “safe” limits, but not 1:1 to 2:1. Can I feed more like 15 or 17 pounds of alfalfa in the winter if needed?

[Alterwho]

Flax for omega 3

[JB]

Ensure 1-2IU/lb Vit E is fed, assume the hay has none. I prefer to aim for 2UI/lb.

Flax is a good idea.

A ration balancer provides a lot more nutrition than mediocre ShoGlo. There are much more robust v/m supplements for those who don’t need the calories. Uckele and HorseTech have several, California Trace/Vermont Blend/Arizona Copper Complete are 3 more that are in between those categories.

Adult horses can tolerate up to about 6:1 ca/phos but that’s not ideal.

[KCSLK]

Thank you for your responses. I was surprised that I had some trouble hunting down flax seed, but I think I found a place locally that sells it and won’t cost an arm and a leg. Is 1 cup / 6 ounces per day a reasonable amount to start feeding?

So, 2IU Vitamin E per pound would mean about 40 to 50 IUs per day, but from what I’ve read horses need 500+ IUs per day. I must be misunderstanding something here. What am I missing? Do I need to supplement Vitamin A or anything else?

What parameters do you consider when comparing vit/min supplements or RBs that makes one more robust than another? I’d like to use up the rest of the ShoGlo I have, but then will switch and would like to understand how to select a good one. For the horse that gets alfalfa, should I be looking for a product that is specific to an alfalfa diet to balance that Ca:P ratio, or not worry about it since diet is less than 50% alfalfa? For the horse on only grass hay, it sounds like I should keep him on a decent ration balancer then.

[Scribbler]

Go online and find the nutrition guarantee on each product, or else take the whole can home. Make up a basic spread sheet, even by hand, that lists all the nutrients down the left side column and then make columns for each supplement that interests you. You can figure out how much of each nutrient per 100 grams, per serving, and the cost of each serving.

Obviously ration balancer is fed at a higher volume than supplements.

Robust simply means has more nutrition per serving.

If there are key nutrients you feel you need you can focus on those, for instance biotin Cooper and zinc for hoof issues.

At a certain point there is no getting around reading labels in an analytical way.

If you find a good general supplement I would suggest feeding to all your horses to keep life simple.

If you want a good overview of horse nutrition I like Julie Gettys book Feed Your Horse Like a Horse.

Horses do not need nearly as much protein as humans or carnivore animals. Most are fine with a 9% protein hay. If your hay supply is steady I would suggest getting it tested but it sounds like it isn’t. I would think there’s enough protein in the alfalfa mix for most horses, there’s usually enough protein in a quality second cut Timothy too.

I like to feed a cup of whole flax per day but I would work up to that over a few days.

IMHO the most serious health risk to pet horses these days is obesity and the consequent metabolic problems. Just like obesity and diabetes in humans. However the current wisdom about horses digestion is that they need 24/7 free access to forage for gut health.

You can do this if you have a big nervous anorexic OTTB. But I’ve seen several people free choice feed their easy keeper stock horses, even young ones, into obesity and laminitis. After that you have a lifetime nightmare of feed and hoof management to navigate. So definitely get the fat horses’ weight stable. Obesity and laminitis on my stock horse scares me more than the possibility of ulcers so she is on a lifelong diet.

[JB]

@KCSLK

Thank you for your responses. I was surprised that I had some trouble hunting down flax seed, but I think I found a place locally that sells it and won’t cost an arm and a leg. Is 1 cup / 6 ounces per day a reasonable amount to start feeding?

Yep

So, 2IU Vitamin E per pound would mean about 40 to 50 IUs per day, but from what I’ve read horses need 500+ IUs per day. I must be misunderstanding something here. What am I missing?

You’re missing some math LOL If he weighs 1000lb, he needs 2000IU/day. That’s total, including hard feed. Hay has none or “none”, grass has plenty.

Do I need to supplement Vitamin A or anything else?

It depends on the hard feed, the amount of grass, and how green the hay is

What parameters do you consider when comparing vit/min supplements or RBs that makes one more robust than another? I’d like to use up the rest of the ShoGlo I have, but then will switch and would like to understand how to select a good one. For the horse that gets alfalfa, should I be looking for a product that is specific to an alfalfa diet to balance that Ca:P ratio, or not worry about it since diet is less than 50% alfalfa? For the horse on only grass hay, it sounds like I should keep him on a decent ration balancer then.

50% or more alfalfa should usually get a balancer aimed at alf diets - the ca/phos ratio is usually 1:1, not higher than that. They are lower protein as well.

Since you’re not feeding that much, I’d go with grass balancers.

I like balancers to have less iron (little if any added iron), and higher copper zinc. Triple Crown adds very little iron, and as a result, total iron, most of which is intrinsic, is lower than many. They also have more cu and zn than many

[J-Lu]

I suggest a balancer regime. Balancer is grain for horses on a hay or grass only diet. It provides vitamins and minerals, not unlike a multivitamin for people. I’d first advise getting a nutrient breakdown of your pasture (I used Equiananalytic). If that’s not in the picture, look online for your immediate geographical profile to see what might be in abundance or lacking. The USCS has a great website for this. You can get basic info on your hay from local extension services for free.

[JB]

Pasture analysis usually isn’t worth it, as it requires a lot of samples relative to the size, you don’t know what the horses seek more of and what they mostly avoid, and it just changes enough with seasons (and time of day for sugars), it’s not worth it.

[SLW]

My vet had me add Purina Enrich to the diet of my two “hay only and molasses free beet pulp” active equines. I had been feeding Equine Senior but was not feeding it in enough rations for them to get the nutrients they needed so he advised I switch. It’s worked out very well.

[candyappy]

@SLW

My vet had me add Purina Enrich to the diet of my two “hay only and molasses free beet pulp” active equines. I had been feeding Equine Senior but was not feeding it in enough rations for them to get the nutrients they needed so he advised I switch. It’s worked out very well.

That is what I use and am very happy with the results.

[Ceffyl_Dwr]

I’ve been happy with Horse Guard. It ships quickly, is reasonably priced, and my horse has a shiny coat.

From their site: Reformulated to include 1,000 IU of Vitamin E per dose! Horse Guard is the most highly concentrated equine vitamin-mineral supplement on the market today. A mere two ounces a day ensures your horse will get all the critical nutrients typically missing from hay – including 3 mg. of organic selenium.

[JB]

@Ceffyl_Dwr

I’ve been happy with Horse Guard. It ships quickly, is reasonably priced, and my horse has a shiny coat.

From their site: Reformulated to include 1,000 IU of Vitamin E per dose! Horse Guard is the most highly concentrated equine vitamin-mineral supplement on the market today. A mere two ounces a day ensures your horse will get all the critical nutrients typically missing from hay – including 3 mg. of organic selenium.

100% untrue that it is " the most highly concentrated equine vitamin-mineral supplement on the market today."

it has 120mg/lb copper. That’s 15mg in a 2oz serving. Lots and lots of v/m supplements have significantly more than that. Uckele Sport Horse Grass has 375mg. 20mg Zinc in the HG, vs 780 in the SHG. And that’s just 1 of the many products that have loads more of lots of nutrients.

It doesn’t even have a proper ratio of iron:copper:zinc - way too little Zn in relation to Cu.

I guarantee you the amount of copper and zinc in the HG won’t make a difference in a lot of grass hay diets

Adding 3mg of selenium to some diets would result in a toxicity, so be careful there too, that’s a lot for a single serving.

[KCSLK]

Thank you!

@Scribbler Thanks for your detailed response. While I would love, love, love to have a hay analysis done, unfortunately it just isn’t in the cards right now with different hay sources, fields, and cuttings. If I gave the impression that don’t want to read feed labels analytically, I definitely didn’t express my concerns right. I put together a spreadsheet like you suggested (with a column to compare with the NRC required daily values), but I still struggle to compare the value of one feed to another. (Several of my questions are listed below.) Not knowing the hay element of it is probably a big part of it. I’ll try the book you suggested. As far as the obesity issue, I agree 100% with you. They are both QHs and the easy keeper definitely would eat himself into metabolic disease in a heartbeat, so I have fought that issue since I bought him. It was harder when he was on grass, but the good news is that it seems like my current system is working well for both horses. Easy keeper gets “free choice” hay – but only an ok hay in a slow-feed hay net. While unfit and a little plump (probably a BCS 6), he is not obese – but I know how quickly that can change! Both horses are together for 10-12 hours a day with netted hay and then, weather permitting, separated for the other 12-14 hours so that the harder keeper can get his alfalfa and free choice timothy (not in a net). I am starting to ride more, so I’m looking forward to getting them both into better shape as I keep riding.

@JB Well that math error is embarrassing. For some reason, I thought you meant 1-2IU per pound of hay instead of per pound of body weight. No idea where that thought came from, but glad we got it cleared up! With that error corrected, it sounds like I should increase the Vitamin E a bit, so I’ll do that. After comparing with the NRC nutrient requirements, it seems like most ration balancers will cover the Vitamin A need so that is one less worry. I’ll stick with a grass balancer, but will also select an alfalfa balancer that fits his needs and can be purchased locally so that I am ready to switch if I have to start feeding 50% or more alfalfa to the harder keeper this winter. Thank you so much for taking the time to answer my questions on this thread & my other recent one.

@SLW and @candyappy TSC carries Purina Enrich around here, so that one would be fairly easy for me to get. They also usually have Nutrena Empower Topline Balance. So far in my ration balancer comparison, I like the Triple Crown 30%, but haven’t been able to confirm that there is a dealer near here that carries it.

More questions:

• When picking a ration balancer, are guaranteed analyses for amino acids beyond lysine, like methionine and threonine, important or valuable? What about B vitamins, or cobalt, or iodine? Should a lack of a guaranteed analysis for iron be an immediate red flag when trying to balance Fe:Cu:Zn ratios?
• One of my horses often deals with skin issues and thrush. Do these issues indicate specific nutritional deficiencies that should be my focus, or just a need for better nutrition overall?
• I read in an article (which I now can't find, unfortunately) that the higher sulfur content in alfalfa hay can inhibit selenium absorption. Is this something I need to counteract with additional selenium for the horse that gets alfalfa since we are already in a low selenium region? After reading this article https://drkhorsesense.wordpress.com/2014/10/09/selenium-paranoia/, it seems like in this situation where we are in a low selenium region, there is a greater likelihood of doing harm by feeding too little selenium instead of too much. So I think I would be safe to add a little extra selenium, but is it really necessary?
• Does the golden flax vs brown flax difference really matter? There seems to be some conflicting research and information out there, but Triple Crown's flax product is golden flax and from what I read the Omega 3:Omega 6 ratio might be a little higher in golden? So I asked the store to order me in a 50 pound bag of the ground golden flax instead of the brown they had in stock. I picked that up yesterday!
• However...neither of my horses will eat the ground flax. The food vacuum will eat it if I mix it with soaked alfalfa or if I wet it and form it into little balls, although he doesn't relish it. The picky eater won't touch it, dry or wet or mixed with soaked alfalfa (which he also isn’t crazy about). Any suggestions on how to get them to eat it? I thought about making “flax treats,” but I read that the Omega 3s can be damaged even at 125 degrees F or less, although this website cites research stating otherwise https://www.goldenvalleyflax.com/flax-facts/health-research-articles/flaxseed-storage-baking-stability/#:~:text=Flaxseed%2C%20either%20whole%20or%20coarsely,from%20the%20stored%20flaxseed%20samples. I want something that doesn’t require much additional $ investment and can be stored at the barn without refrigeration, which also knocks out adding applesauce.

Whew...I know that was a lot. Any and all help is appreciated!

[JB]

@KCSLK

@JB Well that math error is embarrassing. For some reason, I thought you meant 1-2IU per pound of hay instead of per pound of body weight. No idea where that thought came from, but glad we got it cleared up! With that error corrected, it sounds like I should increase the Vitamin E a bit, so I’ll do that. After comparing with the NRC nutrient requirements, it seems like most ration balancers will cover the Vitamin A need so that is one less worry. I’ll stick with a grass balancer, but will also select an alfalfa balancer that fits his needs and can be purchased locally so that I am ready to switch if I have to start feeding 50% or more alfalfa to the harder keeper this winter. Thank you so much for taking the time to answer my questions on this thread & my other recent one.

You’re welcome, and sorry! Yes, most things are on a body weight basis

More questions:

• When picking a ration balancer, are guaranteed analyses for amino acids beyond lysine, like methionine and threonine, important or valuable? What about B vitamins, or cobalt, or iodine? Should a lack of a guaranteed analysis for iron be an immediate red flag when trying to balance Fe:Cu:Zn ratios?

  I’m not concerned if a feed doesn’t have AAs beyond those 3. Most do, just don’t list them in the GA. I hate when they don’t list Fe. If you like it otherwise, call and see if they will tell you

• One of my horses often deals with skin issues and thrush. Do these issues indicate specific nutritional deficiencies that should be my focus, or just a need for better nutrition overall?

  Very likely a nutritional issue - the copper and zinc, maybe Vit E, maybe Vit A, maybe low Se

• I read in an article (which I now can't find, unfortunately) that the higher sulfur content in alfalfa hay can inhibit selenium absorption. Is this something I need to counteract with additional selenium for the horse that gets alfalfa since we are already in a low selenium region? After reading this article https://drkhorsesense.wordpress.com/2014/10/09/selenium-paranoia/, it seems like in this situation where we are in a low selenium region, there is a greater likelihood of doing harm by feeding too little selenium instead of too much. So I think I would be safe to add a little extra selenium, but is it really necessary?

  If your vet’s Se test is cheap enough it would be worth testing now. If it’s like mine, around $100, then I would be ok with the added Se in a balancer and test in 3 months.

• Does the golden flax vs brown flax difference really matter? There seems to be some conflicting research and information out there, but Triple Crown's flax product is golden flax and from what I read the Omega 3:Omega 6 ratio might be a little higher in golden? So I asked the store to order me in a 50 pound bag of the ground golden flax instead of the brown they had in stock. I picked that up yesterday!

  IMHO it doesn’t matter enough

• However...neither of my horses will eat the ground flax. The food vacuum will eat it if I mix it with soaked alfalfa or if I wet it and form it into little balls, although he doesn't relish it. The picky eater won't touch it, dry or wet or mixed with soaked alfalfa (which he also isn’t crazy about). Any suggestions on how to get them to eat it? I thought about making “flax treats,” but I read that the Omega 3s can be damaged even at 125 degrees F or less, although this website cites research stating otherwise https://www.goldenvalleyflax.com/flax-facts/health-research-articles/flaxseed-storage-baking-stability/#:~:text=Flaxseed%2C%20either%20whole%20or%20coarsely,from%20the%20stored%20flaxseed%20samples. I want something that doesn’t require much additional $ investment and can be stored at the barn without refrigeration, which also knocks out adding applesauce.

Whew...I know that was a lot. Any and all help is appreciated!

Maybe a handful of ground oats, a little peanut butter, and the flax? I wouldn’t cook it, no.

[suzyq]

I have an easy keeper who is on hay only and I have tried a few things, he really doesn’t need the calories from a ration balancer. He won’t eat a lot of the powdered supplements. I’ve settled on this, can’t tell you how it works yet because I’m just starting it!
https://madbarn.com/product/aminotrace/

[candyappy]

I have no experience feeding the TC30 but from people on this board I know there are a lot of horses that decide they no longer like it. I have never heard of that with the Enrich. Mine have always eaten it up.

I feed whole flax that I get in a 50 pound bag and it is the darker. Before I found that my feed dealer would order it for me I tried the ground and not only did my horses not like it, it was so expensive compared to the whole. Try feeding it whole. I never have anything sprouting in my manure pile so they do ingest the whole flax.

Feeding the RB/ flax ended my mare’s minor skin issue that had suddenly come up. I do know that thrush can be contributed to living conditions in addition to possible nutrition deficiencies.

I think trying to do all you can to give your horse a well rounded diet is important, it really can be a black hole when we try too hard. For my horses all they have ever needed was good hay, a good quality feed ( when needed) and well kept , dry living conditions and they all thrived with no feet or illness issues. Being educated is helpful but it can also do a lot to hinder us when we read so many differing views.

It shouldn’t be so difficult to feed our horses. It didn’t used to be.