Looking for the safest and best thing to feed. Bonus points for widely available.
Easy or medium keepers: purina enrich plus.
Medium to hard keepers: a mix of purina ultium gastric care and enrich plus.
Triple crown makes a similar product to enrich plus, but I just have had better luck with purina; I’ve found some weird stuff in TC products.
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I have fed whole oats for 18yrs.
Before that, fancy barn where I boarded fed a 50/50 mix of crimped & rolled.
When I brought my horses home, I fed that mix for a couple years, then switched to whole.
Horses are in good health & weight, soft, shiny haircoats year-round - verified by my vet.
Fed to 27yo TB for 5yrs (until lost in a trailer accident)
15yo TWH for 5yrs (lost in same accident)
19yo WB for 5yrs (euthed for anaerobic infection from abcess)
23yo Hackney Pony for 13yrs (as long as I’ve had him)
Also fed to mini for 2yrs, but it made him pre-laminitic. He’s been on TC Sr (& Thyro-L) for the last 5yrs & doing great.
All in light use.
The only supplement I feed is BOSS - 2T twice a day for horse & pony 1T to mini.
ETA:
Hay is 1st cutting orchard grass, fed by weight 3X daily + 24/7 access to pastures. Grass in pastures is “Meh” at best, but I feed less hay when grass is at it’s peak, more as it dies off.
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I’m a Triple Crown fan. I used to feed TC Senior, and I still think it’s a very, very good feed. After some tinkering with current horse though, I find he does better with soy eliminated from his diet. So he gets Triple Crown Balancer Gold and I mix it into a mash with shredded beet pulp and his supplements (Omega Horseshine, some other odds and ends). I add a couple big handfuls of chopped alfalfa to the mash and voila. Yummy and healthy for his tummy.
Tribute is an okay feed too. It’s probably my second choice after Triple Crown. Their Kalm N EZ is a nice feed and they have it in soy-free now too.
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Good quality grass hay and graze, plus a vitamin/mineral balancer. I use Poulin because my feed store carries it.Very simple.
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Well, we know that high NSC is harmful, so here’s what I feed:
Easy keepers - 1-2lbs of Tribute Essential K or Buckeye Grow n Win
Moderate - 4-5lbs of Tribute Kalm n Ez or Buckeye Safe n Easy
Hard Keepers - 6-8lbs of Tribute Seniority or Senior Sport
Obviously, the weights will fluctuate depending on the individual horse, and how much hay/pasture they get and it’s quality, but this is generally where I start, but always on the lower end of range I gave.
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2-4lbs Alfalfa pellets
Serving of California trace plus
3 tablespoons Iodized salt
2000-5000iu Vitamin e
SmartPak Smart Tendon (probably a placebo for me but I am slowly and suspiciously coming to favor it)
1-2lbs Triple Crown Complete when she is in work for the extra cals but I try to avoid grain.
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Guses you need to give me “average use” and how many days a week, horse is worked. It varies so much between people!
Here average use can be 3 to 5 days of a couple hours, depending on weather because we have no indoor. Our training horse has Trainer using her 5 days a week, 4 ridden, 1 of ground work (long lining, free lunging things). We had to have Trainer reduce her food, mostly the GOOD hay because horse was gaining weight, had chubby cheeks!
We also feed a recipe mixed for us at the local elevator, consisting of whole oats, cracked corn, soybean meal. No commercial feed.mixes Our horses do extremely well on it, solid hooves, shiny coats, flowing manes and tails. They get minimal amounts, once a day, plus good pasture or good hay we grow ourselves. Working horses get about 1/2 pound grain mix with old or young horses getting less grain but all the hay or pasture they will clean up. Getting horses fit for competition, doing 8-10 miles 3 days a week, walk, trot, gallop, may get their grain upped to 1 pound a day. They also may be doing additional arena work on the other 2-3 days of the same week. They all get wet beet pulp once daily with the grain mix. The ridden training horse gets a red and white, small Campbell’s soup can of the grain mix once a day, maybe 1/4 pound. She has no pasture turnout, just a small paddock for a couple hours a day, so not as much exercise as the horses at home on 12+ pasture hours.
Horses are made to eat real grains, woody shrubs, grassy plants, never saw sugars until the last 100 years. Lots of new horse problems with newer feeds that may not contain actual grains. We are old-fashioned in our feed choices, horse-keeping practices because we see it working for us! The working horses can compete with anyone, on this diet, being fit. It cost us much less by-the-pound getting our grain mixed, feeding in small amounts, than what other folks seem to spend. Horses here are healthy, bright-eyed, seldom have any health issues way into old age!
I don’t consider an hour a day in the arena to be very hard work, unless you do a LOT of canter/gallop work. Certainly was not keeping our training horse svelte with all the hay she would clean up! We had to get firm with the Trainer and her barn help about hay quantity fed. Horse needs LESS. They are used to seeing fat horses, that looks good to them, but not to us!
So you might consider using whole grains, mix it yourself, over commercial feed mixes. A bag of plain oats, a bag of cracked corn, then scoop out what you need each day. Getting a hanging scale to measure out what you mix is the best control method. Can of soup does not weigh the same as 50% oats and 50% cracked corn when using the same can as a measuring device. There are also “light and heavy” oats depending on how dried they got. Scale keeps things consistent using pounds not volume.
Good luck figuring out a “grain recipe” to suit your horse!
Really good Timothy hay.
Hay is the most important thing.
Then Omniety premix VMS, salt and ground flax in a small mash of beet pulp pellets and alfalfa cubes.Thats the cheapest and lowest NSC option where Iive with the best VMS balance.
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Alfalfa/timothy cubes soaked with a good vitamin/mineral or ration balancer.
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Triple Crown Balancer Gold
Hay 24/7. Different varieties, amounts and delivery systems depending on individual need.
I also feed a variety of basic supplements. Salt, electrolytes, Omega 3 (flax or KER EO3), homemade hoof supp (cu/zn + biotin), Vit E. I feed the salts religiously, the others cycle in and out based on need.
I also like Purina Omega Match RB almost as much as the TC and I think it can be a better choice for some horses / situations.
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Free-choice alfalfa or alfalfa/grass mix hay 24/7
Ration balancer - I like Tribute Essential K and Seminole Equalizer
If actual “grain” is needed - Tribute Kalm n EZ pellet
Not a fan of textured feeds, myself.
way too many variables. Does “widely available” mean only locally, or does it include what you can order from Chewy?
Tribute isn’t widely available. The most widely available brands are Triple Crown, Nutrena, and Purina.
If by “average age and use”, you mean not growing, and not geriatric, and in moderate work, then the only variables are:
- how many calories do they need beyond what your own forage is providing
- is the forage all/mostly grass, or all/mostly alfalfa
Ration balancers are for those who don’t need calories beyond forage. If you’re feeding all/mostly alfalfa, then you need one aimed at that, and there aren’t many - ProElite, Tribute, Buckeye, and LMF are the few I can think of. But if you’re feeding all/mostly grass, then nearly every brand has a ration balancer, and without a hay analysis showing one has a slight edge over another, or you know generally what your area is like in terms of forage content, they’re all the “same”.
For example where I am, forages tend to have lots of iron, and not enough copper and zinc, and of the 3 major brands above, Triple Crown has more cu and zn, so is my preference.
If your horse needs more calories than a ration balancer, then brands have a variety of feeds that are suitable for most “average” horses. As long as you’re keeping NSC < 20% or so, then any of them are as good as the next, until the horse says This one works well, That one doesn’t
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Mine all get a tiny amount of beet pulp plus timothy alfalfa pellets soaked. To that gets added 1 cup of Triple Crown Senior (purely to mask supplements), flax, salt and Vermont Pro blend. They get this once a day and they all look amazing. The only one who gets a little more is my Arab who is in hard work and travels a lot. He gets dinner in the form of 1 pound of triple crown senior and a flake of alfalfa. They all have 24/7 access to grass round bales or pasture
Age and use really have nothing to do with what they NEED.
Do you have an easy keeper? Hard keeper or something in- between?
Until I started using a Ration Balancer( all 3 get enrich senior) I just used a tiny amount of feed as something to throw into the bucket, so they were happy to be getting something because we always have good quality hay and my horses have never needed supplemental feed to keep weight on.
Feeding mares, foals or youngsters I prefer Purina. The choices abound.
It is my unpopular opinion that 90% of supplements to horses who don’t have some kind of diagnosed veterinary issue which requires dietary intervention, have no trouble keeping weight on, and are not in heavy work, are just a way to keep supplement companies in business.
That said, I do feed extra vitamin E in winter when there’s no green grass. That’s about it though. I’ve fed all kinds of recommended supplements to my easy-keeper mare who only gets about 15 to 20 trail miles a week on average, and I cannot objectively say any of them did anything noticeable. There’s a huge amount of confirmation bias with supplements.
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I would distinguish between VMS and other kinds of supplements.
I know that our hay is likely low in minerals and obviously no Vitamin E. I feed a comprehensive VMS just like I take a daily multivitamin myself.
When I was younger I didn’t think I noticed a difference with human vitamin pills but now that I’m older I get charlie horse leg cramps when I stop the vitamin pills so I clearly need something magnesium or calcium etc.
So I see a horse VMS as just filling in the gaps.
I feed an ounce of white salt (plus a salt block) and a cup of ground flax as well in my mash.
I did notice a difference after I started the flax again this fall.
All of these elements are nutrition IMO, not supplements. I agree there are a lot of overpriced supplements that you don’t need if you have the nutrition nailed down.
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Supplements, I 100% agree.
But ration balancers and feeds aren’t supplements, and really are a requirement for more optimal nutrition. No forage provides enough of all the things, or not in optimal balances, or both. And hay is worse due to the degradation of Omega 3 and Vit E.
Calorie requirements can vary wildly between a dozen 10yo, 1100lb horses in moderate work. But their nutritional requirements are all the same, and forage-alone doesn’t cut it from a nutritional perspective.
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Agree 100%. Earlier in the thread I posted that hay and pasture plus a ration balancer is all I normally feed. Vitamin E in winter, and when it gets truly cold I make a warm mash with salt in it. My hay is first cut as my mare tends to pudge.
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All my horses aged four months and up get a ration balancer. I will add to that if calorie needs require it but that is the foundation
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