We have a local elevator that mixes our grain for us. I just call in an order. Our beet pulp is unsweetened, horses were not made to live on sugars. Plus in a talk on nutrition the speaker said many prepared feeds throw in “leftovers” which are not nutritious and you pay dearly for them. Read labels, unidentified ingredients. Yet covered in sugar/molasses, horses readily eat them. Molasses products mold easily in our humid location, so often a prepared grain bag is bad when opened or shortly after. I find it better to just avoid the molasses in our feeds.
Recipe for our grain mix is currently 50% cracked or rolled corn, 50% whole oats. Say 200# of each mixed. 10% of that is 40#, which is the quantity of soybean meal (protien) added to the other two grains, then all three aew mixed together. Total of 440#s of grain. Cracked corn is very usable by a horse, figure they get almost 90% of the nutrients out, so they don’t need a lot of it. Whole oats is lots less nutrient value, probably 20% or less. Oats are good for “scratching” the digestive system going thru, horse likes the taste, can “fill out” the amount fed but not add many calories, keeping horse busy eating longer. I do not get rolled oats because of the price difference and again, not that much value added nutritionally. We feed all the horses small amounts of this mix, they perform well, look good, don’t need volumes of grain, even being large horses. In very hard work, no one gets more than 2#s, once a day. Usually they get less than a pound.
Very easy to change the percentages of corn and oats in the mix. If horses are not working, you might want more oats, less corn, though soybean meal always stays at 10%. In my nutritional talks, I learned higher protein in feeds is just peed out. So money wasted there. Horses do not use more than 10% protein after they are yearlings. Feed them all you want, they do not use the extra. This is total diet, 10% protein. One of the reasons feeding alfalfa hay induces so much peeing. Have to get rid of the extra protein! We change our ratios from time to time, horses not doing much, don’t need the extra corn. In cold winter, we give more hay to warm them up, fermenting to cause heat in body. Not more grain.
You might try the wet beet pulp with some grain, in very small amounts with the older horse. My piggiest horse took almost 2 weeks to get going on wet beet pulp. Started with a handful in grain and she refused it until she could not resist the grain. I tossed the refused stuff daily, it can ferment in heat, did not want her sick. Once she consented to eat it, she liked it, we gradually increased the amount fed. We use hot water to make it in winter, they like it warm. The benefits are very good, adding more moisture when cold can reduce good grinking. Fills horses out as a forage, not stupid like adding grain can make them.
You do have to watch your potassiun/phosphorus/calcium levels. Unbalanced numbers can cause body problems, epiphisitis for one. I see that in young horses fed a lot of alfalfa. We avoid alfalfa, horses don’t need such rich hay. We buy grass hay, will have timothy, brome, orchard type grasses in the bales. We feed a lot of hay, small bales, controlled quantities. If they don’t clean it up, I reduce the amount. Always some waste, but I try to keep it minimal. Hay cost too much to waste any! I don’t do big bales. Equipment to store and handle them is lacking. I don’t like the issue of invisible dead animals in the bales, horses eating contaminated hay. Also dealing with much wasted hay, horses eating constantly to become obese.
With your young horse, you may want to study hoofcare, it might help keep her sounder than many QHs. Locally we see the “cowboy trim” with extremely short toes and shoes too small. For unknown reasons, small, neat hooves are desired on QHs. The hoof wall is cut WAYYY too short, so fitting a shoe to the little foot means the shoe is too small. Toe length is often less than 3 inches! True on big and small QHs. Many actually have too small of feet for their size, but cutting hooves smaller to look right for showing, leaves no sole depth, leads to lameness, permanent damage, loss of usefulness. My old Western horse, 14.2H, 900#s fit, wore 1s in front, 0s behind, on 3 3/4inch to 4inch long toes. Her feet were actually proportionate to her size if you were not used looking at show QHs. Her feet were huge compared to many QHs she competed against , but she never took a lame step, had a million miles on her. With knowledge, you can prevent your horse being trimmed too short, no sole depth to protect the bones, or getting shoes too small, keep her usable. Even young horses can naturally have a longer toe than 3 inches. Don’t cut it off!
