Is Integrit-T even available in the US?
It’s not soy-free - it contains both soybean hulls and soybean meal.
http://www.equipurina.ca/en/products/lines/equilibrium/integrit/
[QUOTE=Montanas_Girl;8446618]
This couldn’t be further than the truth. Ration balancers are designed to meet the horse’s amino acid, vitamin, and mineral needs when feeding a larger amount (5+ pounds, for most feed companies) of grain is not possible for one reason or another. Commercial vitamin/mineral supplements, in most cases, don’t come close to meeting the mineral needs of an easy keeper at maintenance - never mind a hard keeper, working horse, etc. The best textbook way to balance a ration is to test your hay and add those specific nutrients that are lacking. However, it is often more cost effective and practical for horse owners to simply add a ration balancer to a hay or pasture diet and be done with it.[/QUOTE]
I think plenty of things are further from the truth. 
IMHO, I don’t think one should willy-nilly start feeding their horses things they may or may not need (this isn’t directly addressing the OP, but a general statement ). I also think that one should have one’s hay tested and work to do the math on a feeding program before deciding what extras to feed.
There are so many horses out there on sweet feeds / grains that do not need to be. IME (and I’ve had my hay tested and worked with nutritionists) hays differ so widely (even within the same type of hay) that until you have it tested, you really don’t know what you are feeding and so may or may not need to use a RB. It sounds like we are in agreement regarding that.
I guess I’m just not one to throw a commercial product to my horse based on the opinions of various people online without going to a nutritionist for advise, especially when a horse has special issues.
Plus, the major of RB have soy in them and I found that to not be good for at least one of my horses.
I’m all for the simpler the better, especially when trying to revamp a special-needs diet. Start as simple as possible and then add things as tolerated and needed. From my own experience, there are foods that I wouldn’t necessarily say I’m allergic to, but that I am sensitive to. And some things that under normal circumstances I have no problem with, but combine it with other foods and I have a reaction…unless you keep it simpleasy as a base point, if you start having problems again, you’re not going to easily know why and which ingredient it was.
[QUOTE=Pocket Pony;8447395]
I think plenty of things are further from the truth.
IMHO, I don’t think one should willy-nilly start feeding their horses things they may or may not need (this isn’t directly addressing the OP, but a general statement ). I also think that one should have one’s hay tested and work to do the math on a feeding program before deciding what extras to feed.
There are so many horses out there on sweet feeds / grains that do not need to be. IME (and I’ve had my hay tested and worked with nutritionists) hays differ so widely (even within the same type of hay) that until you have it tested, you really don’t know what you are feeding and so may or may not need to use a RB. It sounds like we are in agreement regarding that.
I guess I’m just not one to throw a commercial product to my horse based on the opinions of various people online without going to a nutritionist for advise, especially when a horse has special issues.
Plus, the major of RB have soy in them and I found that to not be good for at least one of my horses.
I’m all for the simpler the better, especially when trying to revamp a special-needs diet. Start as simple as possible and then add things as tolerated and needed. From my own experience, there are foods that I wouldn’t necessarily say I’m allergic to, but that I am sensitive to. And some things that under normal circumstances I have no problem with, but combine it with other foods and I have a reaction…unless you keep it simpleasy as a base point, if you start having problems again, you’re not going to easily know why and which ingredient it was.[/QUOTE]
I think we are in agreement that simplifying the diet is usually good, and putting factual information, thought and research into choosing the diet is also good. Some people choose some things, others choose other things. I don’t think there is only one specific diet that works for every horse.
Soy appears to be becoming a hot button, but there is mostly anecdotal “evidence” as to why it’s a hot button, and not much in actual research.
Having said that, once my easy keepers reach maturity (about age 7ish) I switch them over to a lower protein “lite” feed from a higher protein rb. I’ve noticed that when kept on a rb, they get really beefy, but when switched to a lower protein lite feed, they maintain a more desirable weight. I don’t necessarily think it’s soy as much as protein content. IMHO, an easy keeper with a good topline is better off on a vit/min supp alone, or a lite feed if some calories are desired.
fordtraktor, for reasons I can’t explain Uckele products are hard to find in my area. Twice in the past I wanted to use one of their supplements and I would have had to have bought it online. I will explore that and HorseTech too, I’ve used Glanzen many times in the past and HT is great to work with.
[QUOTE=JB;8445949]
Rice bran by itself won’t provide much Vit E, but stabilized rice bran will (stabilized with mixed tocopherols almost all the time)
Make sure it’s fortified too, which means added calcium, since you’re feeding a grass diet. Max-E-Glo is both stabilized and fortified. Most commercial rice bran products made for horses are as well. Exceptions tend to be in areas where alfalfa is the predominant forage, then they aren’t fortified.[/QUOTE]
It’s stabilized/fortified, I looked at the bag tonight. It’s the Manna Pro brand rice bran.
And in other news, the small independent feed store I LOVE posted a sign today that they are closing their doors after 140 years. 
SOB!
So… ALL the horses are now going to Blue Seal products, the retirees and Somerset (Frankie already eats it because that’s what the boarding barn feeds). If I order Somerset and the 3 retirees food-- that pushes me up to a big enough order for delivery. So now I will get EVERYTHING delivered except the M10 which will be a monthly drive to the other feed store, which isn’t bad. Blue Seal makes a product that is AWFULLY like the Ultium that the retirees eat. So they’re switching too.
Not sure if this was already mentioned but a lot of feed companies use corn and oats to clean their machines. So that is why when you buy certain corn and oat free feeds, you will still occasionally find pieces of corn and oats in the bag. So while I couldn’t possibly say that 1 piece would make a difference, it does to people who are allergic to nuts so even 1 piece of corn or residual oil might cause a flare up in your horse too.
Sorry to add to your headaches but in your search for the right grain, call the mills they are processed at and see if they use corn and oats to clean with. I believe Buckeye doesn’t but I am not sure.
He is not so sensitive that on stray kernel of corn will hurt him in a substantive way. He did react to ‘feed mill dust’ (believe it or not, it’s one of the couple dozen things they test for) but it wasn’t as severe a reaction as the straight corn/straight soy.
I probably will never ever be able to eliminate ALL exposure. Someone might walk by and feed him a cookie with oats in it and I can’t make the boarding barn use different buckets etc. for him-- so the spoon used to stir his feed may have at one time touched Sentinel, etc. I do want to stop intentionally feeding him things made of known allergens.
The boarding barn is so super. They were happy to either have all the feed delivered their and they mix it or for me to make up pre-mixed bags and they’ll credit my board bill the cost of the feed. So I am going to do the latter to minimize their workload and to make sure there’s as little cross contamination as possible.
Totally agree, thought for a great many people, maybe even most, having hay tested isn’t feasible, unfortunately. The hay is often sourced from too many places. Even some boarding barns get their hay from a middle man who gets it from a variety of sources.
The thing with RBs is that they are not any different from regular feeds in terms of what criteria you use to pick one. They are just nutrient-dense regular feeds - think of them that way. If a horse gets fat on 5lb of TC Sr for example, so you only feed 2lb, well, you’re better off, nutritionally, feeding 1lb of TC 30. That’s all they are, nothing magic, not promising miracles, just nutrient-dense, calorie-lite feeds
There are so many horses out there on sweet feeds / grains that do not need to be. IME (and I’ve had my hay tested and worked with nutritionists) hays differ so widely (even within the same type of hay) that until you have it tested, you really don’t know what you are feeding and so may or may not need to use a RB. It sounds like we are in agreement regarding that.
That is true, but you can replace RB with “hard feed” and it’s all the same
I guess I’m just not one to throw a commercial product to my horse based on the opinions of various people online without going to a nutritionist for advise, especially when a horse has special issues.
Special issues get into another area, and I agree, someone has to have some level of knowledge to understand the horse’s issues and apply them against the almost infinite ways to feed a horse.
Plus, the major of RB have soy in them and I found that to not be good for at least one of my horses.
As do probably 99.999% of regular feeds - the soy.
I understand what you’re saying - KISS for everyone’s sake. But RBs aren’t any different from regular feeds in that aspect 
[QUOTE=WNT;8446824]
Look into Platinum Performance for a vit/min supplement too. I had a customer some time ago with a horse with allergies on par with your guy’s. Pretty much everything you’d feed a horse except oats and flax. I looked through the ingredients on every multivitamin we stocked and came up empty. Soy, alfalfa, corn by-products, etc. We ended up suggesting oats and asking their vet about Platinum Performance.
PP is flax based, and I am fairly sure no other ingredients beyond the vitamin and mineral package. I’d start with barley, PP, and probably Coolstance or rice bran for extra calories. Would canola oil be an acceptable source of calories? Most flax and coconut oils for horses are blended with soybean oil for affordability. McCauleys and Triple Crown make straight rice bran oil, but you pay for the purity.[/QUOTE]
It has soy flour in it.
I’m shocked at how many supplements have soy or alfalfa. Some that you’d never guess that feel flax based
Platinum Performance Minerals appears to be soy-free. You won’t get vitamins from it, but it’s fairly inexpensive when you order in auto-ship Paks.
I have a call in to HorseTech re: making me a custom blend. I have had nothing but great service from them in the past for years and years, so if I ended up not sticking with a ration balancer-- I will probably use HT.
In the meantime I ordered some Tri-Amino from Smartpak. Thanks IPESq and others who turned me on to that. I somehow had never heard of that before and with Somerset going off all commercial feed, I think adding that in is a good idea. His MSM is allergen free, he can continue on that. His Vitamin E is also fine. His Smartbreathe he doesn’t need anymore because it turns out I was wrong about why he was acting allergic (all along I thought it was pollen/dust/mold but the allergy testing says “no.”) That just leaves his hoof supplement. He was on Omega Horse Shine which I loved… but it’s got allergens. As does the SP hoof supplement, Biotin 100, and all the other ones I usually use. HT’s BioFlax 20 is fine so I am going with that for now. But if I switch to a custom HT blend, they presumably will add the biotin to that blend.
I am actually excited to try this and see how he feels. He’s already leaps and bounds better on the antihistimine. I am just waiting for the McCaulley M10 that I ordered to come in. I have everything else.
And everyone’s going to Blue Seal and I am actually happy about that. It will simplify my life greatly and I know for my non-allergy horses that the Blue Seal products work nicely.
Don’t forget that you can have Horsetech add in the Nutramino to whatever they’re making
Not to derail your thread…what is horsetech?
A lovely company that makes supplements. Reitsport and Glanzen might be their most famous ones…
They really are lovely to deal with.
I love HorseTech! They will make custom blends for you. And you can get fortified and stabilized flax from then (Nutraflax) and they have NutrAmino which is similar to TriAmino. I get almost all my supplements (except my straight MSM) from them.
[QUOTE=MysticOakRanch;8450308]
I love HorseTech! They will make custom blends for you. And you can get fortified and stabilized flax from then (Nutraflax) and they have NutrAmino which is similar to TriAmino. I get almost all my supplements (except my straight MSM) from them.[/QUOTE]
Where do you get your straight MSM?
[QUOTE=Palm Beach;8450657]
Where do you get your straight MSM?[/QUOTE]
I always used Select the Best brand which Smartpak, Jeffers, and Tractor Supply stock.
[QUOTE=Palm Beach;8450657]
Where do you get your straight MSM?[/QUOTE]
