No amount of bagged feeds will make up for total crap hay. And pound for pound good hay is still usually cheaper than anything in a bag.
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If you want to add protein you can use Calf Manna, which is a high protein feed supplement ( it has other nutrients too) . I am not sure how much you add for a horse as I have just supplemented my Jersey milk cow or breeding goats at times. It is expensive( I pay $30 for 50 pounds) but you donāt feed a lot.
Every animal I have fed it to scarfs it up with gusto. It has complete feeding instructions on the bag. Your horses just lack " bloom" as I would call it. I am sure it is due to the forage quality.
While Calf Manna isnāt the worst thing, there are ration balancers much better suited for equine nutritional needs. 1-2lb of most of them for most adult horses. For really crap hay you could double that, but at that point it would likely be cheaper to feed a regular feed.
I donāt know, the are plenty of old horses that donāt get any hay because they canāt chew and do really well on a bagged complete feed. Itās certainly not cheap, but if hay is really crazy expensive, it might be a reasonable option.
Alfalfa pellets around here are 15/bag, so 600/ton. Decent complete feed runs in the 20/bag range, so 800/ton. Thereās hay available here in NOT a bad hay year thatās imported (from out west) thatās over 1000/ton. Iāve seen local hay go for 800/ton in a bad hay year in Coloradoāand that was over a decade ago, crazy to think about with inflation.
Donāt know just how much hay is going for in the OPs area, or how much far away hay winds up costing with the import outlay, but itās not totally outside the realm of possibility that it may make fiscal sense to go with bagged feed.
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Iām looking into feeding small alfalfa squares instead of this hay. I found some that would be good for them. I just might find some square bales of grass hay so itās not just alfalfa.
Iām still looking into a ration balancer. Found out triple crown is not available in my area. I can get on chewy and get tribute or buckeye. Not sure which one. I have Purina and nutrena brands available here. I can not get the Purina ration balancer but maybe the nutrena.
If you can at least feed 1% of his body weight of decent quality grass, or a grass/alf mix, that would be great.
Any of the balancers will do. Tribute would be my bottom choice simply because itās a bit lower nutrient profile than many others. So Buckeye or Nutrena, and of those, Buckeye would be my choice just because Nutrena is a 40lb bag and costs more than most to feed.
Curiousā¦ what did you deworm with? Did you perform a fecal egg count?
Have you dewormed specifically for tapes & encysted strongyles?
No sense hoping for weight gain when horses are wormy. I apologize, but your horses all look a little suspectā¦
Old horses being fed 100% a complete feed, no hay at all, is different from young horses being fed a very poor quality hay, and the owner trying to compensate by feeding a couple of pounds of grain. .
I didnāt think the OP was expecting to feed a 100% complete feed diet, but was wondering how to boost nutrition while feeding very low quality hay.
Also feeding an old horse 100% on a true complete feed (not a fortified grain) has to be more expensive than hay in most situations and years. My last batch of good timothy was $500 CAN a ton delivered, which was a jump from previous prices (would be about $300 US I guess).
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I use rice bran to put on weight and a ration balancer to ensure my 14.3 hand pony with Cushingās get all the nutrients she needs. Right now she gets about 4 ounces of feed twice a day and weighs about 800 lbs.
What do you think about Purina vs nutrena feeds? After I supplement with the alfalfa hay and find some good grass hay I might have to switch to these concentrates. This is the local are feed brand there is around here.
The conversation directly prior to your last post was regarding feeding a complete feed with hay only as filler chew time. Yes, itās expensive. But yes, hay prices CAN exceed that cost. Iāve seen it happen several times in the last 15 or so years.
$300/ton for grass hay would be blissfully low in this area. Geez, I wish!
Yea I havenāt gotten a price on some grass hay but small square bales of alfalfa are $15 each here.
Complete feeds are fortified. They just also have a high enough fiber content (20% range) to serve as the fiber source for horses who are eating only that.
has to be more expensive than hay in most situations and years. My last batch of good timothy was $500 CAN a ton delivered, which was a jump from previous prices (would be about $300 US I guess).
Usually, yes. But sometimes, no.
It helps if you can buffer the cost of a good complete feed with, say, some beet pulp, which acts as a long-stem fiber, up to 40-50% of the forage requirements if necessary. This is when the high volume of soaked beet pulp comes in handy.
Youād need to ask in terms of which feed. Both have good feeds. Both have things Iād never use other than as a treat or taste tempter. Purina Ultium feeds are good. Nutrena Safechoice Special Care is fine. Both of their ration balancers are totally fine. Purina Omelene 400 is ok - the rest are so, so high in sugar.
I have the choices of the safe choice line, omelone line and strategy. There are no option for ration balancer. Chewy has the only option for ration balancer.
Of those, Iād probably start with Ultium Growth
The growth feed is not available here. The regular ultim is.
Yeah, I didnāt word that right. I meant there are fortified feeds that have all the ācompleteā nutrients but youāre meant to just feed 4 lbs a day plus hay, and then there are the true complete feeds that would replace everything for an old horse.
Right - all complete are fortified, but not all fortified are compete 
Some fortified (but not complete) feeds have much higher feeding rates though, so itās not limited to 4-ish lb. Many are in the .5-.75lb/100lb range, and some have a higher starting point. For example, for a 1000lb horse, Strategy is recommended at almost 6lb for light work, and over 9lb for heavy work. But often, yes, 4lb is the bare minimum, from a nutritional perspective, for a small horse in little work.
