My horse is a bit of a hard keeper and needs some help getting some extra weight without the added grain. A friend suggested topline xtreme however in the description there is nothing about weight gain, just muscle improvement. The same company also offers benefat which is aimed for weight gain. Does anyone have any experiences with these products and cod provide me with some feedback? Or alternative products people have had success with?
What is your horse’s current diet? Can you increase the quantity or quality of the roughage? There are also many feeds out there that are roughage based and not grain based that may help.
Hay is usually the least expensive per pound part of a horse’s diet, followed by the concentrate, with the supplements being by far the most expensive.
Right now he’s on half a scoop of a senior sweet, half scoop of a higher fat sweet and a flax seed supplement type. He gets great hay, gets as much as he will eat. My concern is that he’s moving at the end of the month so that will change. They feed strategy, have less quality hay but can get more of it, and grass quality is slightly better. He gets the one full scoop both am and pm right now. We tried upping it once, but it c Mole felt changed his attitude - too much sugar I’m thinking. I’m worried the strategy won’t be enough for his fat intake, but at the same time he can potentially get more because it’s less sugar and it shouldnt affect his energy levels
Strategy would not be my feed of choice, but it looks like it should be fed at 5 lbs a day. Not sure how that translates to scoops. A hard keeper should get more concentrate. What brand of senior feed were you feeding? “Sweet” feed would be a textured feed with a high NSC. Don’t confuse “textured” with “sweet.” Most premium brands moved away from high NSC contents as research supported the benefits of lower NSC.
I’m not a big fan of mixing 2 types of concentrated feeds, there are SO MANY choices out there that you can usually find one to fit your need, and then just increase or decrease the amount to suit your situation. I think that a hard keeper could handle more than 2 scoops of concentrate a day, and this would give you the best result, depending on what you are feeding.
