I have an air fern for a gelding. He’s kept outside, and has good pasture for a decent part of the year, with the winter months being a bit sparse. He gets orchard grass as needed, basically free choice. Right now he’s on the smallest serving of Enrich Plus (split AM/PM) and gets Vit E, Selenium, MSM as supplements.
He’s being treated for ulcers, and I’m wondering if there’s any reason I couldn’t switch him off of the ration balancer to alfalfa pellets and add a vitamin/mineral supplement? My thinking is that alfalfa should be better for his ulcers than the ration balancer, and he doesn’t need the calories of the ration balancer.
Are there specific vitamin/mineral supplements that are best to be fed with alfalfa pellets?
I did this when my horse was treated for ulcers- though he doesn’t do well with alfalfa so I used timothy cubes. He’s the opposite of an air fern, but he did ok with it.
It was long enough ago that I don’t remember what vitamin supplement I used, nor do I remember why we ultimately went back to grain… Needed weight most likely.
Thanks! What about the alfalfa doesn’t he do well with?
I could also just add alfalfa hay back into his diet, but I was planning to wait until the pasture dies back a bit before doing so.
I also like the idea of getting closer to a forage based diet, I don’t think there’s any reason he needs grain, except for the vitamin/minerals that he gets from the Enrich Plus right now.
He gets really insane. I really wanted to believe that the alfalfa making horses hot thing was an old wives tale, but at one point we tried adding alfalfa for weight and he ran so much in turnout that he lost weight instead. So I don’t feed him alfalfa anymore
The smallest serving of Enrich for an average horse is 1lb, and that’s in the 1300 calorie range (some are a bit less, a few are a little more, I don’t know Enrich’s exactly but 1250-1300 is a reasonable guess)
Alfalfa pellets are roughly 3c/lb give or take - a little less volume for small pellets, a little more for larger ones, but you get the idea - and 1000cal/lb
By the time you add 1-2-3c alf pellets to knock down the taste of a GOOD v/m or forage replacer, you’ve only knocked off a few 100 calories
And, that little bit of alfalfa pellets isn’t going to impact his gut much at all
It’s not about the carrier/alf pellets, it’s about your hay/grass. Nearly all the forage balancers are good enough for grass forages, for adult horses. I only know one, MadBarn AminoTrace +, which is more suitable for alfalfa-based diets, as it has more P than Ca.
that’s not going to work (well) if he’s such an easy keeper that you’re concerned about the calories in 1lb of Enrich Plus
If he’s eating at least 1.5% of his weigh tin forage, he’s already on a forage-based diet
Thanks, this is really helpful! Yes, he’s currently on 1lb.day of the Ration Balancer, and that is mostly because he’s been out of work all summer due to what’s turned out to be ulcers. In the past, depending on his work and hay situation he’s been on anything from 3lb of Enrich Plus to a normal serving of Triple Crown Senior. With his pasture and excellent hay situation now, I don’t think we’ll need to ever go back to the TC Senior.
Can I drop the ration balancer completely and just feed his normal supplements and a vit/min supp? I guess that’s more of a hypothetical question. I’ll probably see how his weight does over the next few months with increased workload and the pasture dying back.
My fattypants guy who we treated for ulcers gets TC Balancer with Relyne for post-ulcer management, as recommended by my vet. He’s still a chunk, but his gut seems to be doing great!
I did have him on Outlast, which worked really well- it calmed his gut down even before starting treatment, and I used to give it to him as a little snack before riding or trailering. But he’s a piggy and choked BADLY on his bare cup of Outlast one afternoon, necessitating a vet visit and tubing, so now we wet his balancer and pump in Relyne and things are good! Anyway, Outlast is fantastic, so that might be something else to consider. [Had I been wetting his food down with the Outlast from the start it would have been fine, but now I’m skeered so I just do the Relyne instead.]
ETA: I briefly flirted with doing alfalfa pellets and a vit/min supplement, but he didn’t like it much (and my other horse HATED it), and my ulcer guy does so well on his current diet that I figured I’d just leave well enough alone.
Read the labels. Basically a ration balancer is a vitamin mineral supplement cooked into palatable pellets. So it’s not that different from a VMS fed in a beet pulp or alfalfa cube mash. I find powder supplements hide best in mash not with dry pellets.
Ration balancer may have more protein than the VMS.
But they are both just two ways of getting to the same place. Depends on what’s available in your area and what your barn can handle feeding.
My guy has actually been on Outlast for the past 2 years- AM/PM and handful before riding every day. Still developed ulcers unfortunately. I took him off of it for treatment because I read that it can inhibit his med absorption, but I’ll likely start him back on it, or something similar after treatment. I’ve never heard of Relyne, I’ll look into it!
Yep, that makes sense. I was thinking that alfalfa might provide a little extra ulcer protection over the base of his RB, but it sounds like it wouldn’t make much of a difference. I’m hoping he’ll drop enough weight over the next few months that we can start him back on some alfalfa hay in addition to his orchard grass.
Yes, a good forage balancer ,or really robust v/m supplement (there aren’t many, but MadBarn Omniety is one) can work in place of a ration balancer. Plus something to mix with it of course
That last part is important. No vms/forage balancer has any significant protein, there’s simply not enough to them. They may have a nice amount of the top 3 limiting amino acids to compete with a ration balancer, but that doesn’t do much good if the base diet is questionable or low on protein. Even then, questionable/low is much less of an issue for adult horses than it is horses < 2yo, or adults who are working hard but still have limited forage intake. The issue of protein is more likely to be due to low quality forage rather than quantity of forage
A friend’s horse who has a lot of dietary restrictions worked with a nutritionist out of Cornell. His diet is entirely alfalfa and rice bran (plus free choice hay), no grain, and the nutritionist said that as long as she supplements with Vitamin E and access to a red mineral salt block a ration balancer wasn’t necessary. I thought that was interesting!
Assuming it’s unfortified rice bran, so has the high phosphorous that grains have, then alfalfa + enough rice bran does a good job with the Ca:P balance. Working with a nutritionist may mean she has a hay analysis, and outside of the Vit E (which is an issue in all hay), it may have been quite good in terms of amounts and ratios of nutrients. But you can’t assume it will be
That said, I honestly wouldn’t leave the salt requirement to a block, much less a red one, I’d force-feed the salt, or provide loose salt and a plain salt block.
Not sure where you guys are located but Paddock tree has a Concentrate that might be worth having a look at. Small does goes a long way as far as providing everything they need with a concentrated premix included. Also has the alfalfa right in it.
