I have a 19 yr. mare that uses a grazing muzzle in the summer months.I’m afraid she isn’t getting enough vitamins and minerals in her diet.She has started this head shaking thing when I ride her.I’d like to try either Purinas ration balancer or Wellsolve W/C product.She is on pasture 24/7 all year round with round bales in winter with a hay net on it.Any suggestions would be helpful.
I’m sure @JB can give you a thoughtful response.
And while I have JB’s attention, maybe I can unabashedly hijack the thread for a moment. Our local feed store is no longer carrying milled rice bran. I love what feeding a couple ounces each of rice bran and flax seed does for a coat, but they are harder and harder to find in the milled form. I am looking into extruded options. Any suggestions? I don’t need anything that is fortified. We’ve got the vitamin and mineral side covered. Ideally I would like to find a simple pellet option that is half flax seed and half rice bran or something very close.
Back to your regular programming. :D:D:D:D:D
I use Renew gold as a balancer for coastal hay and pasture.
@westerngirl a horse who has to be muzzled on grass (presumably due to weight, at least) doesn’t need any regular feed. A ration balancer might even be too much, but it’s a place to start because you’re right, forage-only diets, muzzled or not, don’t provide either enough nutrients, or the right balance. RBs won’t necessarily fix all imbalances, but they get you closer. The Purina Enrich is as good a place to start as any.
@OneTwoMany I have no idea of any extruded product like that. Renew Gold is a rice bran, coconut meal, flaxseed mix with a little bit of calcium added (to counter the high phosphorous of the rice bran).
It’s not remotely a balance. Grasses are already higher in phosphorous than idea, sometimes making an inverted ca/phos ratio, and Renew Gold provides at best a 1.5:1 ratio, but at a small feeding amount. At worst it’s a 1.2:1 ratio. And that’s it for appreciable nutrients. No copper, no zinc, magnesium, lysine, protein, or anything else that helps make for optimal health (or even just regular health, depending on the quality of the forage, especially Coastal Bermuda)
A fat source with a bit of added calcium doesn’t balance forage. It’s just a supplemental fat source that at least isn’t really unbalancing forage any more than it already is.
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I’d like to add that no matter what you end up doing, weigh your feed and balancer so you know what you’re feeding and can address any deficiency or excess.
You didn’t actually ask a question - does it have to do with “does she need a ration balancer” or “will a ration balancer fix the head shaking?”
TC Lite is formulated for horses in your situation that, due to weight issues, cannot always have free choice forage or a full serving of concentrate. It has less protein than a ration balancer, so you want to look at your horse’s topline, coat and hooves. If they are good, you’d lean towards TC Lite, if they need some help, a ration balancer. Since you did not test hay and pasture, you are really guessing at what may or may not be deficient.
WRT the head shaking - does your horse cough at all when you ride?
Okay, to be totally low-level… Has the head-shaking started at the same time as the no-see-ums have emerged, hungry and annoying, to drive us all crazy?
A minimal serving of TCL has more calories than a minimal serving of nearly every ration balancer. Yes, it’s formulated for horses who can’t have the calories from the minimal feeding amounts of regular feeds, but still more than RBs
It has less protein than a ration balancer,
In what context? Per pound? Yes. 12% vs 28-32%
Per serving? Depends. 1lb of a 30% balancer is 136gm protein. 3lb of TCL is 163gm.
Nutrients (and calories) need to have the context of serving size in order to be compared.
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@OneTwoMany, are Seminole feeds available in your area? Their Ultra Bloom product is an extruded rice bran, with Ca and vitamin E added.
Renew gold is a good supplement if you want to add pelleted coconut/flax/rice bran, but it’s not a vitamin/mineral supplement. For my easy keepers I feed an organic ration balancer called Horse Supplement pellet made by Modesto milling that is low sugar/starch. It meets vitamin/mineral needs if fed at the rate of a 1lb per day for a full size horse, and has protein from a variety of sources and no soy. Some horses do fine on soy and the high protein supplements like Triple Crown 30 or Purina Supersport can be helpful for keeping or adding topline, but the soy can aggravate hormonal tendencies in some mares in my experience. For headshaking some horses are helped by supplemental magnesium and salt, and I particularly like Magrestore, which is a more bioavailable form of magnesium called dimagnesium malate.
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15% protein is about 1/2 of what most RBs provide, and closer to the 10% that the few soy-free balancers (TDI10, M-10). It doesn’t appear to be as fortified as traditional RBs either, with very few actual nutrients added, more in the way of a few various “foods” added.
Do you happen to have the analysis for it? I don’t see it listed online 
It’s 15% protein, so lower in protein than the 30% protein supplements, but looking at the feed tag it does pretty well as a vitamin/mineral supplement, at least for CA hay. They will send you a full ingredient list if you email them. It’s designed to be balanced with CA hays, and most people in CA feed some alfalfa since our grass hay is variable in quality. No fillers like soy hulls or wheat runs, it’s got a lot of good ingredients but I probably would supplement with an additional protein source if you have a horse that can’t get any alfalfa. I get it through a feed coop so it’s pretty reasonable for me. I have a couple that can’t tolerate soy but both of them get a flake of alfalfa and several flakes teff hay, and I feed flax as well. Both mares do well on it and are sleek and shiny. I feed the Modesto milling horse Plus feed to the gelding who needs more calories, mixed with Triple Crown Senior, but the Modesto plus has more oats and isn’t suitable for all.
Yes, it does look like it’s more in line with balancers aimed at high protein forages. I’m still interested in a GA, since there are so few nutrients added
Per pound, since you can feed 1-2 lbs per day. TCLite and ration balancers are formulated for different circumstances.
Yes, they are for different situations. My point is that the context of the serving size, not on a per-pound size, has to be included when talking about nutrient and calorie amounts.
And unless you have a 500lb pony, you’re not feeding just 1lb of TC Lite. It’s 1-2lb per 500lb. Likewise, a similar serving of a RB is in the range of 1/2lb for a 500lb pony, so TCL still has more calories. And if that pony gets the higher end of feeding, at 2lb, then TCL is also more protein.
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I will have to look them up - and see what other products they have (and where it is available)! But I do want to point out that a LOT of us in California (I’m only 2 hours north east of Modesto) do NOT feed alfalfa. I’m curious to see if they offer a higher protein balancer that might be relevant. Soy free is easy if it is low protein - soy is usually used as an inexpensive and effective source of protein.
Very few of my horsey friends feed alfalfa unless they have broodmares and babies. I always think of alfalfa is the feed for the western disciplines. Orchard grass is still the most popular hay in my social circle, with rye grass probably running 2nd most popular, and alfalfa or orchard/alfalfa blends coming in 3rd. Then we get the more inconsistent grasses - meadow grass, pasture grass, etc - which are mostly mixed grasses. And of course, the horrifically high NSC forage mixes (barley, oat, and whatever else), which I think of as cow feed, but a lot of people do feed it to horses because it is cheap.
I’m always looking for low NSC options - in my area, we have Purina (it seems to be everywhere), LMF, Nutrena, and Elk Grove Milling…
I’m in N Texas and my easy-keeper has grass access all year. Currently muzzled for 12 hrs on 4.5 acres of extremely lush Bermuda pasture with minimal weeds, dry lotted overnight with a slow feed net of ~2lbs grass hay. 6 weeks ago I started him on SmartVite Thrive (multi-vitamin pellet, 1st time trying it) and SmartBug-Off pellets (been using for 3 years,) no other concentrates or grains and he looks fantastic - bright eyed, perky, blindingly shiny! I’ve tried different brands of ration balancers over the years, but he always put on weight with less than the suggested serving, which defeated the purpose of feeding them.
Has anyone tried Purina’s Enrich Plus ration balancer for a horse who can maintain on grass or hay alone, but needs a little grain to wash down a joint supp and also needs vitamin/mineral supp.
I’ve used the enrich many times with ponies, works just fine and horses find it tasty.
Any given ration balancer can and has been used that way for many horses.
For some, even that 1lb is too much. But assuming you aren’t having to really make every calorie count, it’s great. If you’re able to feed the appropriate amount (1/2lb to 3lb or so depending on size and age and state), then you’re all good.
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