“Grains” absolutely needs to be defined here. Some define it as cereal grains - there are loads of ways to do that commercially.
Some define “grains” as the regular feeds, fed in the 5lb+ range, but seem to consider ration balancers as “grain free”.
And some mean no commercial bagged feed at all.
Assuming you mean a commercial, fortified feed, then it’s not rocket science to formulate a decent enough diet. But a lot of people DO manage to screw it up because they don’t understand even the basics. Taking a grass forage base, adding a fat supplement and a general, 1oz serving v/m supplement, doesn’t make a balanced diet. Taking a largely alfalfa base and adding alfalfa pellets and/or beet pulp also doesn’t serve.
Taking a grass forage base, and adding alfalfa pellets, a fat supplement, and a high quality v/m supplement (typically in the 2-8oz serving size) gets you a lot closer.
I have one horse who has been “grain free” most of his life. Good v/m supplement (mostly High Point Grass from HorseTech), Tri-Amino/Nutramino, extra copper and zinc, and a cup or 2 of alf pellets or beet pulp. He didn’t tolerate a ration balancer most of his life, quickly developing fat pads behind his shoulders. The other 3 have been “grain free” for all of some of their lives, and some of the rest, same as the one.
It is almost always more $$ to feed a horse this way if he needs significant calories beyond the forage, especially if they don’t like fat supplements. Commercial feeds are generally about 50% higher in calories per pound than alf pellets, for example (and more than that for most grass hay concentrates), but the cost of those things is often not double. So, by the time you make up the calories PLUS add a good v/m supplement, it doesn’t take too much to out-spend.
It’s not just the calories you have to look at, it’s the whole nutrition. So very very few forages have both enough nutrients, and in the right balances, to support optimal health. I aim for optimal health, as that supports long-term health and soundness. It doesn’t matter that horses evolved eating just forges and leaves - they are not the big horses of today, they didn’t evolve as working animals, they also had access to a much larger variety of feedstuffs to were likely a bit better balanced in their nutrition than today’s typical mono-culture forages (pasture and hay).
-my questions:
-is this better than grains ? I like the Idea of it from the whole ulcer aspect and reducing inflammation caused by grain
- do you feed less…does it save money?
-is the horse getting what they need?
You have to define “better”. Yes, it is better if the horse is sensitive to common ingredients like soy and alfalfa. No it’s not better in the context of ease of feeding.
This whole inflammation, anti-inflammatory diet, “why horses shouldn’t have grain” deal that’s a common topic these days has a whole, whole lot of misconceptions and mis-information going along with it, which is why one needs to explicitly define things. There are a lot of low NSC grain-free commercial feeds that are not going to cause or exacerbate ulcers for all but the most sensitive horse (and then I’d assume it may be soy or alfalfa at the root).
Feed less/save money - see above. For the most part, calories = calories, and if you’re feeding 6lb of a 1500 cal/lb commercial feed for 9,000 calories, if you’re looking at just alf pellets, that’s 9lb, plus a good v/m supplement. If you use 2lb of, say, rice bran for about 2800 calories, then you could get away with 3-3.5lb alf pellets, but you’d still need a good v/m supplement on top of that.
Is he getting what he needs? Entirely depends on your choice of v/m supplement and the concentrates, as well as the analysis of the forage, and the same applies if you’re using a commercial feed/balancer. You’re just working harder to make up what’s in a feed/balancer.
