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The nutritionist's recommendation....seems extreme

Suppress the horse’s ability uptake copper and zinc. Or the excess iron disrupts the ratios so that the horse needs more copper and zinc to do what it’s supposed to do. Something like that.

It’s got some science behind it. I think it’s more location specific, like selenium excess / deficiency

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Okay. That makes sense. Here in New England selenium can be low, so locally produced feeds compensate for that.

And then there are the people who wildly over-supplement stuff like that because, you know - if a deficiency of something is bad, then a massive overdose of it must be a miracle cure for basically everything.

Magnesium seems to fall into that category nowadays.

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Triple Crown Senior Gold is grain free and low nsc. If that’s available to you that may be a good option. They might have other grain free feeds too, but this is just what I have experience with.

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Ok I didn’t read every post. Sorry

But it won’t hurt to try it. I did with my hard keeper OTTB and for him it did not work. We removed all grain entirely and replaced with alfalfa pellets, it just wasn’t enough calories for him. He couldn’t eat enough to keep his weight.

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So people are still talking about Pasture Paradise. All I can imagine in our climate that instead of wet fields, you have a wet muddy path between strands of hotwire, that gets piled up with poop over time.

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I think the pasture paradise thing is one of the stupidest things ever. And I’m one of the few who actually have tried it.
I once said so, and was straight up attacked on this site over it.

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I’m not surprised.

I once linked an actual, bona fide study that measured horse movement in pastures of various shapes, the Pasture Paradise included. I think it was Australian.

Anyway.

Wanna guess which shape came in first? The large square.
Wanna guess which shape came in last? The Pasture Paradise.

Yep, yep. And still the All Naturals went ballistic.

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This would concern me as timothy pellets and grass may not give your horse complete nutrition. Have you analyzed your grass through a reputable company such as Equi Analytical?

How does this equine nutritionist know that YOUR horse is spiking inflammatory proteins? Or blood sugar? I’d suggest getting your vet to pull a blood sample to verify if this is true.

Speaking as someone who has had their pasture grass and soil analyzed and compared that to what he actually eats and determining his digested nutrients, I suggest you perform more in-depth analysis and perhaps choose a less biased nutritionist to evaluate your horse’s intake versus his job. Balancer saved my horse’s diet. I am suspect of any vet who takes your horse off of a balancer and relies on the nutrients of any hay harvest, which depends so much on the particular soil, weather and year, unless there is data to prove that your horse is receiving a balanced diet.

Depending on the breed of your horse, horses are long since domesticated and can process grain for calories. Even mustangs are “feral” not “wild”, and their physiological makeup depends on the breeds abandoned on the plains that make up today’s mustangs.

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Yeah I’m not sure why they are so for it when most of them haven’t even tried it.
I boarded where there was one. All the horses stood by the gate all day long. There also seemed to be more injuries.

Common sense would tell you it wouldn’t work well. But I guess sense isn’t all that common

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I totally could see horses fighting more in a Pasture Paradise because they can’t get away so easily.

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Yep. Also fencing broke more often. Just in general not a good idea.
I understand the concept for the fat horses, but in reality it doesn’t work and you are better off with a regular dry lot.

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Clearly not.

At least in my area, fans of this stuff tended to be middle-aged ladies with a romantic streak, and it seemed to be the rather fuzzy dream of leading a “natural” herd that got to them. (Never mind the fact that horses “in the wild” rarely spend their time trapped in what are essentially muddy corridors; it was initially marketed as a “natural” treatment for obesity and laminitis, and people bought it - largely, I think, because it was invented by that barefoot guru guy, Jamie Something.)

Anyway, I’m absolutely fascinated by this kind of stuff from the sociological point of view, and I’d love to write a book on the general subject of freakish trends in animal care.

Remember B.A.R.F? Holy Mother! People KILLED over that shit.

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Our vet had a place where the larger pens were connected by alleys in ways that were some kind of such Paradise setup.
We used to tease him about it, as he would let his few yearlings run thru those and an open pen here or there and play around.
In a way it was good for them, but also scary when they were in pinch points, where one would take the opportunity to beat another trapped there, something colts are good at doing.

The reality is, today’s horses are all from domestic stock and have the genes humans picked out to show for it and many of those genes carry traits that real wild horses would not have evolved with, not needed as wild horses.
Feral horses are no different than domestic horses, many ranches still raise their foals feral and if you start those or a feral horse, they will all respond similarly, as domestic horses will.

When it comes to horse nutrition, we know so much, but not everyone has the same information, so much out there is a bit … out there when it comes to what to feed a horse.
Just look at all the very pretty supplement catalogs out there. :roll_eyes:

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Yes. I don’t think the diet sounds “extreme” but do think it sounds “fad-ish”. There is nothing wrong with “commercial bagged feed” as JB termed it – it’s not like most owners are throwing down a 5 gallon pail of corn for their horses.

The part that is fad-ish is making these recommendations without testing the hay, which makes up 95% of the diet. Good quality hay is hard to get in many places, so taking away other forms of nutrition without knowing what is offered in the hay is a bad idea, especially if someone is concerned with their horse’s overall condition.

It would be different if you had a fat pasture puff (like I do) hanging around. I am far less concerned for my two fatties, even though technically it’s the same issue - e.g. I should not take away their small portion of feed without at least being fairly confident they get everything they need in their hay.

My old TB, though? No way would I take away her grain without more knowledge of the hay.

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I can’t speak to the specific recommendations given to OP for this horse, but the idea that all grain is bad, with no individual considerations, and that soy creates inflammation makes me suspicious.

That being said, these weird combos of 4 grains/pellets and 7 supplements people create for their horses are overly complicated and usually not addressing total nutrition. A complete ration from any premium maker is balanced by those with significantly more education and experience with equine nutrition than most, including most vets. Finding the one that is best for your horse (senior, balancer, etc) is important, but if you aren’t giving a full ration of one product, you are at risk of mixing and mashing lots for an incomplete result. Maybe add a top dressing or alfalfa pellets/cubes to a complete ration for calories, but some of it gets ridiculous.

If you do want to mix and experiment, then I would suggest a qualified nutritionist. There is no regulation or credentialing process. Look for someone with education in animal science from a reputable university.

ARPAS (American Registry for Professional Animal Scientists) does have a board certification process, but I am not how sure how widely it is used.

Relevant Feed Room Chemist episode:

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Yes, in fact, it was recommended to me by this same person :rofl:

Hair analysis is often listed as a hallmark of human nutrition quackery.
Birds of a feather, quack together.

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I have quite a lot of friends who have a PP-like setup, and it is the ONLY thing that keeps their unrideable horses in good weight. They do move.

lots of people set this up incorrectly, and blame the concept. If horses aren’t moving around the track, then they aren’t eating IF it’s set up properly. That’s the whole point - put food around so they HAVE to move from food source to food source to water.

One friend has this set up around her small grass pasture (California) and they get a little bit of time in the pasture when there’s grass. But they cannot have full time pasture or they’d explode. Her track system is fantastic.

If you make the lane too narrow that would be true. If you try to force incompatible horses, or too many horses, into a too-small space, whether a narrow PP lane or too-small paddock, that’s trouble.

The ones I have seen work are wide, with rounded corners, with compatible horses.

there were v/m supplements recommended as well. No idea which one(s)

There’s no way to know how balanced the current diet is either

It was a “nutritionist”, not a vet, and 4lb of Sr and 2lb of a balancer, which is a lot of calories to replace with forage pellets. Even then, no hay provides everything in the right amount or the optimal ratios/balance, so while some horses can do well on high quality hay, some don’t

The horse who was originally domesticated is the same horse as today, physiology hasn’t changed, it hasn’t been nearly long enough to affect those types of changes. The problem is more that some of the things that were introduced to the domestic horse are easily digestible, and some are not, whether that was 5000 years ago or 50 years ago. Corn is not easily digested, beet pulp and alfalfa are.

It depends on how they are formulating it. There’s no guarantee a ration balancer, or 6lb of a Sr feed, does a good (enough) job with a forage either, without testing the hay. Going to a forage balancer isn’t inherently any better or worse.

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That could be - but I’ve never seen it done well enough to work as promised, so I couldn’t say.

I guess if you’re making a 100 meter track around a 50 acre parcel, sure - it may well be terrific. (Of course, if you have 50 acres, your horses are probably walking around plenty, so you wouldn’t need a track anyway, but let’s give it the benefit of the doubt.) I can believe that would work - especially if it was in a very dry part of the country, and assuming you invest a lot of time on upkeep.

Okay.

In practice, though, I’ve only seen it used in settings where there’s much too little space, exacerbated by the fact that keeping it all going was simply too much work for a normal person to do. And, really, I can totally see why: picking manure all around a muddy, churned-up little track is a serious pain the ass, as is spreading hay carefully enough to keep a single horse moving along as planned - never mind a group!

So, no. Still not a fan, I’m afraid.

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Lots of poor implementations of many things because people don’t actually understand the concept. They think if they flip a rope in a horse’s face long enough that will teach him to back up, that a “chute” around a pasture with too many horses will magically take weight off. People try to mimic a lot of things with little to no understanding, and blame the idea when it was they who failed the implementation.

My CA friend has 4-5 acres, so not 10+, and has implemented things very well, and has a draft, some “normal” horses, and a mini. Horses move, aren’t fighting or resource-hoarding.

I couldn’t do a PP here without spending a lot of money on footing (red clay), and then a lot of time maintaining that track. But I know people who have tried and their horses are always hurt because of slipping in mud/clay - that’s not the PP fault, they simply didn’t do it well.

I spread hay twice a day over 6+ acres in the Winter, 10-15 piles depending on the weather, so that’s not a big deal. It would certainly be less walking to spread that over a track system LOL

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