Oh sure, I agree. But I would think that a professional would offer more than just a best guess based on likely nutrients. I can do that myself, for free.
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Yep, there’s either some thing missing here (I don’t think so), or this isn’t a real nutritionist. And since they seem to be on the whole “soy/wheat/grains/commercial feeds are bad” bandwagon, they aren’t a real nutritionist by default.
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Yes, I’m a little afraid that I’ve wasted my money here. Which is irksome, because this nutritionist came highly recommended from a friend who had great results with her. Oh well, my heart was in the right place I suppose.
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The takeaway here could be to review your feed mix and crunch the numbers and see if you have any gaps in minerals or vitamins. I would say that’s the really important thing. When discussing nutrition, calories are different from protein, vitamins and minerals. I’ve been following the barefoot protocols that stress large doses of copper and zinc, which you don’t necessarily get in most feeds or RB. I feel that the VMS is the most important part of my mash, I can vary the amount of mash up or down with affecting the nutrition analyses just the calories.
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It’s really not that the proposed diet can’t work, isn’t healthy. Depending on the v/m supplementation it may be as good as, or even better, than what you’re feeding now in terms of balance. It will no doubt be more $$ though.
But if she didn’t even ask for a forage analysis, that’s Flag 1.
For me, if there weren’t health issues I was trying to address, I wouldn’t have spent money with even the best nutritionist, unless maybe I had gotten an idea from some educated reading that maybe I wasn’t feeding a great diet, and could do better.
Your friend’s horse may have had issues that really did benefit from coming off soy, which almost always means needing to come off a commercial bagged feed. But a good nutritionist who doesn’t subscribe to “unnatural diets cause inflammation” as gospel, could have suggested the same thing because it might have been a good fit for that situation.
Did we ever determine if you have a forage analysis, or have enough hay (like for the Winter) to warrant one? If you do, or can get one, you can plug numbers in here for free and see where things stack up
Nutrient Requirements of Horses - Working Doc (nas.edu)
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Ask her to cite peer-reviewed evidence of these claims. (Spoiler alert: they don’t exist…) What kind of “nutritionist” was this? I am an equine nutritionist (M.S. degree and PAS certification), and I don’t know of a single peer who would make such a claim.
Edited to add: You’re welcome to PM me if you’d like some (free) help with your horse’s diet. Yes, I work for a feed company, but I am more than happy to recommend a product in whatever brand/line you prefer. 
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There are some good ration balancers that are soy and grain free. I particularly like Tribute’s Wholesome Blends Balancer, it’s high in protein, no added iron, high in vitamin E and essential minerals, and the horses like it. It’s 15% NSC. There’s also Modesto Milling’s organic horse supplement pellet, also around 15% NSC, and the Daily Dose Carbbuster, which is only 7% NSC. For harder keepers I add additional flax and canola oil.
If I may add my experience to your conundrum - I have had a lot of success with going “grain free” and pulling my horses off of commercial feed. I thought for a while that it wasn’t the best choice for my 4yr old so I put her on Triple Crown Senior and felt I had to keep piling more and more and MORE into her to keep weight on so I yanked her back off of it after about 6 months. My other mare undeniably does better grain free. The older mare (picture below) has been on seemingly every grain under the sun: sweet feed, Purina Senior Active, Strategy, Pro Force, Triple Crown Senior, Tribute Kalm N Ez (this was the best), Buckeye, etc. All fed at rates of 8-16lbs per day, some with rice bran (2-4lbs on top of the grain). Now she gets beet pulp (2lbs/ day) and Tribute Essential K (1.5lbs/ day) + supplements for her hoof stuff (see the thread about Coffin Bone Infection Round 2 for context). She looks amazing, in my opinion, and I feel (Unscientifically) that this must be better as I am not having to feed nearly as much. It was certainly not a calorie for calorie swap, though I don’t know why. Top is her “grain free” and bottom is on the Kalm N Ez.
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Wow, she looks incredible!!
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Any time “grain free” comes up, it really needs to be very clearly defined.
Does it mean no whole cereal grains?
No whole grains, but piece parts are ok, like wheat middlings?
Or does it mean no commercial bagged feed at all, no fortified feed, no ration balancer?
Or does it only mean no commercial bagged feed that is a “regular” feed fed at 4lb+ a day?
A ration balancer is a commercial bagged feed. They have many of the same ingredients that a great many regular feeds have, just in smaller amounts on an as-fed basis (but potentially in higher amounts per pound, like soybean meal)
I don’t consider Triple Crown 30 any more or less “grain free” than Triple Crown Sr. Both contain wheat middlings and stabilized rice bran. Neither contains any part of any other grain.
That doesn’t mean a horse truly can’t do better going from 10lb of TC Sr to 2lb TC 30 + 4lb alfalfa pellets (or whatever). Clearly that happens. But the 30 is no more “grain free” than the Sr.
@kaya842 she really does look amazing! Clearly something about those feeds just didn’t agree with her.
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I think that a huge part of the puzzle is getting the vitamins and minerals right. I do think a lot of horses benefit from the beefed up copper and zinc in the VMS products like California Trace and Mad Barn, or similar.
The problem with bagged fortified feeds is (1) many people don’t feed the full recommended amount which can be 5 lbs a day and (2) even the recommended amount may not have really great levels. And at least around here, where bagged formula feeds are over $20 a bag for a 40 lb bag, you’re looking at upwards of $100 a month just on bagged feed. And most horses don’t need the calories of that much bagged feed.
At the opposite end, I don’t see most horses really thriving on a true hay only diet with no VMS or ration balancer. I see horses getting obese and even foundering on free choice hay, and I see others just looking a bit sad and underweight (not at my self board barn, obesity is our major problem here).
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Regular bagged feeds really aren’t suitable for horses who don’t need reasonably high calories beyond their forage, that’s for sure.
Ration balancers are great for most. When it’s known, or suspected, they don’t contain enough copper and zinc, a choice has to be made.
If you feel (or know) the forage is really pretty good for the macro nutrients (protein, calcium, phosphorous, magnesium), but feel/know the trace minerals, especially cu/zn, are low, you can:
1 add a 1/2 serving of many of these forage balancers (which includes MadBarn Amino Trace, for you Canucks 
or add some straight cu/zn (which is what I do for 1 horse)
2 - just use a forage balancer altogether with some carrier/mixer - hay pellets, beet pulp, etc, which is what I do for 2 of my horses
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I’m sorry. I don’t understand this.
Could you explicate a bit?
If I had put in a word that I left out, you would have 
I’ll edit my post so as to not cause MORE confusion, but this is what it should have said:
Regular bagged feeds really aren’t suitable for horses who don’t need reasonably high calories beyond their forage
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Okay! That’s what I thought. Just making sure.
And I agree (now). Too many commercial feeds are formulated for animals that are either hard keepers, or working much harder than the average American horse of the common American breeds.
I’m not opposed to commercial feeds at all, but I do think they should be clearer about these things.
If people actually read directions, they’d understand it to some degree.
Some of them even say “don’t feed less than…”, and some of those recommend then adding a portion of a ration balancer if you do feed less than X.
But absolutely, I would say most don’t even give any hints into why the feeding rates are what they are 
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Yep! It’s also interesting to see what they mean by “Light Work” and “Heavy Work,” which can be quite startling if you’ve never actually looked into this before.
Simple W/T/C on the flat, three times a week is “Heavy Work”? A short, walking ride once a week is “Light Work”? 
This, to me, is just weird. (I would have called the first something like “Light Recreational Riding” and the second “Retired,” but I guess I’m old school.)
Anyhow, I feed what the label recommends, and if the horse is too fat or too thin or failing to build muscle, I change feeds till I find one that suits at the recommended level. With so many commercial feeds and balancers on the market, this is perfectly doable, so I don’t know why people have so much trouble with all this.
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Do you have an example? I can’t say I’ve seen those sort of descriptions.
Yes to the rest - it’s not always easy, but it’s usually a lot easier than people make it out to be if they wanted to put in some effort. I realize boarding situations can be a lot harder if you can only use what they offer, and aren’t allowed to supply your own. But it’s usually easier than most people make it out to be. But the real issue is just a basic lack of understanding of nutrition basics. Education.
You bet! I think this stuff is SO interesting.
The first chart that came up is actually slightly more rational than some some I’ve seen - though still a bit odd-sounding to me - but The Horse is a popular source of info, so let’s go with that one:
Now let’s cross reference this with the feeding instructions for Decade Feeds, which is the cheaper end of the Poulin Grain line. (I use the Performax line myself, but that one doesn’t have a product formulated for “pleasure horses” so I went with Decade instead.)
Okay. So let’s say you have a regular pleasure horse - a QH, for example, since I’m in the US - and you ride, mostly at the walk and trot, once or twice a week. Putting these two charts together, we see a recommendation of 4 to 8(!) pounds of feed per day for a 1000 pound horse doing a couple of very easy trail rides per week.
I don’t know about you, but I think that’s a crazy lot of feed!
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Thanks. The article, by Clair Thunes whom I highly respect, lists the levels of work according to how the NRC Nutrient Requirements for Horses list them, which is what all nutritional requirements are based on.
I don’t see where basic w/t/c 3 times a week is heavy work.
Heavy work in the article is defined as “Four to five hours work per week composed of 20% walking, 50% trotting, 15% cantering, and 15% galloping, jumping, or other skill work”
In your example of the pleasure QH, that’s maintenance to light work, which would be 3.4/4lb, up to 8lb if he really needed the calories (harder keeper, not great quality forage, etc)
4lb really isn’t a lot. 8lb is getting there, but totally reasonable for a harder keeper.
The min amount is based on nutrition, and the max amount is based on how much you can feed without any reasonable expectation of overdosing on something.
0.5-1.0lb per 100lb is a very typical feeding range. Some start a little lower, some end a little higher, but 5-10lb for a 1000lb horse is very typical as a range, even if not typically fed at those higher amounts.
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