Hi! Sending you a PM because you seem really knowledgeable about feed 
I love your idea about doing both a ration balancer and a senior feed for my older guy (24) who is still eating hay.
I talked to the trainer at the barn we’re moving to last night and she said she’s currently feeding LMF Senior and would feed it to my horse for free, or I can pay for my own grain and have her feed it. She said she’s open to trying new senior feeds but thought TC was a bit on the spendy side (so I could buy it myself, but she probably wouldn’t provide it). Do you have any thoughts on widely available senior feeds that high quality, but at a lower price point than TC? Is LMF Senior not a good feed?
Also, I’m concerned that if they’re giving my horse a scoop of senior feed per night, he’s actually not going to be getting the required nutrients since most senior feeds tend to advise a few pounds per day. At any rate, I raised the idea of introducing a ration balancer but she didn’t seem to be super knowledgeable about them. Honestly it’s a little disconcerting that most trainers these days don’t seem to be super informed about these things. Most of them seem to fall into the camp of “they’re all pretty similar - just give 'em a scoop and it’ll be fine.”
That being said, if I wanted to bring in my own senior feed and ration balancer, it seems like I’ll have to figure out on my own how much my horse should be eating. Do you have any advice on how to do that (competently)? I wouldn’t want to overload him with certain nutrients that his body may have trouble processing at his age, and I also wouldn’t want to spend a lot of money on fancy feed and have it not make a difference because I’m not feeding enough of it.
Thank you so much!
Honestly, I’d just start with the RB. Any one you can easily and reliably get, though if TC is available, that’s high on the list. Adding any Sr, of any brand, isn’t truly necessary. Extra calories can come from alfalfa pellets, as an example. But there’s also no harm from using a couple pounds of a Sr feed on top of a RB. Since it would be relatively little, the brand almost doesn’t matter.