My horse had awful feet and I changed his diet to low sugar no grain and his feet have gotten so much better no more thrush and the white line disease went away and the new hoof growth is alot better but he has lost a lot of weight since he’s been off grain.
I have been given him 6 quarts of soaked alfalfa cubes twice a day, California Trace plus minerals, magnesium oxide and flaxseed, he gets grass at night in the pasture and during the day he’s in his stall while the flys are bad. When he’s in the stall he gets grass hay but he won’t eat the hay in the stall, so how can I get him to eat the hay and not starve himself all day and is there anything else I could give him to help him gain weight. I tried beet pulp and it didn’t do anything.
You can’t make him eat grass hay. You can and should buy better hay that he’ll eat, especially since winter is coming, but you may also need to feed a low NSC concentrate.
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Have you tried to feed a little alfalfa hay in his stall, not in cubes or pellets?
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[QUOTE=Bluey;n10235162]
Have you tried to feed a little alfalfa hay in his stall, not in cubes or pellets?[/QUOTE I haven’t been able to find any alfafla hay near where I live
He’s getting the best hay that I can find in my area
What is “grass hay” in your area? (Timothy, Bermuda, Orchard? Something else?)
Where (in general) do you live?
When were his teeth last done?
In my part of the world (Northeast), pasture grass is waning in quantity and quality. It would be very hard to get a horse to gain weight around here if it won’t eat hay.
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It’s orchard grass, western north carolina, his teeth were done 6 months ago
He needs more calories (obviously). Use a low NSC feed that has more cal/lb than alfalfa. Triple Crown Sr, ProElite Sr (Southern States). But what brands do you have access to?
What was his diet before?
www.hayexchange.com may help you find different/better hay. OG in NC is typically pretty good hay, but of course if it’s not grown well, or harvested too mature, that isn’t good hay.
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Before he was eating blue seal sentienl ls and it’s low sugar and starch and he was fat on it but his hooves we’re really in bad shape while on that feed
Try a complete Senior feed from a high caliber company. Many do not add grains while still providing high calories Senior Horses need:)
i can’t recommend any brand in particular as my Seniors have the opposite problem ----- so far:)
Does this page actually load for you? Have tried in a variety of browsers and just get a blank screen.
@Callie1993 while feed can certainly influence feet, you might consider what else has changed for this horse that may have improved his feet–living conditions? Farrier? Old hoof wall just grew out? Season? Correlation doesn’t equal causation, and equine life is very rarely 100% static across the board, baring one single change.
If the horse was fat on Sentinal LS, I’d be sorely tempted to get him back on that feed and see what happens.
If you’re 100% convinced it was the feed causing the problem, use something lower in NSC like Triple Crown Senior. It looks like there are quite a few TC dealers in western NC.
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I should have asked this in my last post, sorry, but how long had you had him, and how long had he been on that feed? I’d just be really surprised if that feed caused his issues, as it’s quite nice.
How much was he getting?
No LOL I fixed the link - com, not net.
@Callie1993 while feed can certainly influence feet, you might consider what else has changed for this horse that may have improved his feet–living conditions? Farrier? Old hoof wall just grew out? Season? Correlation doesn’t equal causation, and equine life is very rarely 100% static across the board, baring one single change.
If the horse was fat on Sentinal LS, I’d be sorely tempted to get him back on that feed and see what happens.
If you’re 100% convinced it was the feed causing the problem, use something lower in NSC like Triple Crown Senior. It looks like there are quite a few TC dealers in western NC.
I agree, it seems so odd that particular feed would cause these issues, so I’m hoping we can get more info via the answers to my above questions 
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What about hay? Was he eating the same hay at that time as well, or different hay?
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Hi OP, Do you know what the NSC is for Blue Seal Sentinel LS? In my experience, there are multiple grains being marketed as, “Low sugar or starch,” that are not what I would consider to be low sugar/starch. I couldn’t find the NSC for Sentinel LS on the Blue Seal website - maybe I wasn’t looking in the right place. I did see a chart for BS Sentinel products on an old COTH thread though and that listed the NSC for LS as 16%. I think of low NSC to be no higher than 12% and, preferably, lower than that.
I agree with others who have responded. There are some really great ‘grain free’ concentrates that are actually low NSC and will provide the additional calorie requirements that your boy needs. I’m sure that if you provide a list of the brands available to you, folks here will be happy to provide recommendations.
Personally, out of what is available in my neck of the woods, I like Triple Crown Senior for a horse that requires some extra calories. It’s only 11.7% NSC, 10% Fat, and has 1546 KCAL per pound.
If you are dead set against traditional feeds, maybe consider something like stabilized rice bran, Coolstance, or adding oil to his hay cubes. But really, a good quality, low NSC complete feed will make your life a lot easier. Especially if you are having a hard time finding hay that he will eat.
Nothing else in his environment has changed he was on the feed over a year,he was getting 10lbs a day, I’ve had him for a year and a half and the same farrier worked on him for a year and his feet never got better, I just changed farriers about a month ago and he told me to take the grain away and add the minerals.
Yes, it’s 16%. Not terribly low, but still considered low on a “standard” of “anything under 20% is considered low”. Maybe not low enough for this horse, but without knowing how much was fed…
Going from that feed, to alfalfa cubes (no idea how much 6 quarts weighs) and a good v/m supplement might be a big change in nutrition, depending on how much of the LS was fed. And it may have absolutely nothing to do with the NSC
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He was getting 10 lbs of the sentinel ls a day
Wowsers. No wonder he’s lost weight. How was his hay/grass situation at that point?
I still think going to the opposite “extreme”, of no commercial feed, isn’t necessarily the right answer. But no matter what, he does have to eat more forage, since that’s where most of his calories should be coming from.
If you do want to avoid a commercial feed, what you do use needs to be a lot more calorie-dense than alfalfa cubes. Pellets are more calorie-dense, I don’t know why you couldn’t feed a ration balancer (there are low NSC ones, and most don’t have cereal grains, plus the feeding rate is much lower), and then look into a fat supplement.
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He was getting the same amount of hay and grass then but I upped the amount of alfalfa cubes, he was only getting 3 quarts twice a day then
Did he eat the hay in the past? I’m wondering about your earlier statement:
When he’s in the stall he gets grass hay but he won’t eat the hay in the stall, so how can I get him to eat the hay and not starve himself all day
Was he eating hay in turnout, or somewhere else? Maybe the issue isn’t with the hay, but something else about being stalled? Just wondering if more things have changed in his routine other than switching out the Sentinel?
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