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Veteran
Posts: 184
 
| Hey everyone!!
I feel like I'm overfeeding my horses and not getting anywhere....My average horse here gets about 8lbs of Kalm Ultra a day plus free choice coastal hay. I've decided to suck it up and buy a semi load of timothy/orchard load to see if the hay will help and supplement alfalfa in the winter. Here are the questions I have....
1. How much grain do you feed?
2. How often to you feed a day?
3. Free choice hay? What kind?
4. Any had any luck with round bale hay nets????
5. Orchard/timothy vs coastal Bermuda?
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 Elite Veteran
Posts: 1079
Location: MN | 1. I feed 1lb of oats, 4oz flax seed and half lb of alfala pellets. Add Renew Gold when needed.
2. Once daily in the winter - split feedings in the summer.
3. Free choice of grass mix, some alfalfa. 1 hefty flake of pure alfalfa once a day.
4. I love slow feed hay nets. Money saver for sure!
5. I personally would go for the orchard/timothy
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 Extreme Veteran
Posts: 595
Location: North Dakota | 1.
**Not really grain but this is what they get at chore time.
24 year old retired gelding: 1lb of renew gold
16 year old barrel horse currently laid up due to injury: 2 cups of oats and 1 qt of alfalfa/timothy pellets.
2.
24 year old retired gelding: Once per day all year round for "grain". He only gets anytime of "grain" just to get his herbs.
16 year old: Once or Twice per day depending on what she needs herbs wise.
3.
I board my horses so I can't quite do "free choice" grass hay all year round but they get enough that they usually have some left when I feed the next time. Free choice is the best if I had a choice.
4.
Yes we net our round bales if we feed them.
5.
I don't have much opinion on that. Our grass hay up here is alot of brome, western wheatgrass, some other wheat grasses and native grasses.
Personally from the sounds of your program it sounds to me like you need to cut back on grain and just keep pushing quality forage. It takes them awhile to come around to it and learn to "graze" on their forage but they will get there if you just keep it in front of them and let them have chance. 8lbs of grain is a large amount and that is probably why they aren't eating a lot of forage. Grain disrupts the GI tract in those huge amounts. If you feed anything as a "grain meal" the rule of thumb seems to be keep it below 2lbs but I have found keep it even further below that and you are going to find they focus more on their forage.
When my mare was getting around 1lb of whole oats-- (not even a processed feed which can cause problems all in it's self) I couldn't get her to really eat alot of forage, that is not even that much grain but she still seemed to be dealing with some digestive upset at that amount. It has been since I cut her back to little to no "grains" at all( even the whole oats) and changed her "grain" over to 90% hay pellets that she is finally eating a lot more forage. She is also looking pretty darn good as well. I would cut out that "grain" feeding all together on both my horses if they didn't need to get their herbs.
Edited by MidWest1452 2017-09-08 12:54 PM
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 Elite Veteran
Posts: 690
Location: Georgia | Ive been feeding mine free choice hay out of hay nets and have been able to cut my to 1 lb once a day. I absolutely love haychix nets, there is a 20% off coupon code in my signature. |
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 I'm Cooler Offline
Posts: 6387
Location: Pacific Northwest | ktbeasleyze - 2017-09-08 9:56 AM
Hey everyone!!
I feel like I'm overfeeding my horses and not getting anywhere....My average horse here gets about 8lbs of Kalm Ultra a day plus free choice coastal hay. I've decided to suck it up and buy a semi load of timothy/orchard load to see if the hay will help and supplement alfalfa in the winter. Here are the questions I have....
1. How much grain do you feed?
2. How often to you feed a day?
3. Free choice hay? What kind?
4. Any had any luck with round bale hay nets????
5. Orchard/timothy vs coastal Bermuda?
1. No actual grain but everyone gets alfalfa pellets and beet pulp. The two easy keepers only get a cup of each (measured before soaking) and the other two it depends on how their weight is.
2. Twice. The soaked stuff in the morning plus hay, and then hay at night. If someone is having a hard time keeping weight on I give more hay and doing a second feeding of alfalfa pellets and beet pulp.
3. During the winter the two harder keepers get free choice Timothy.
4. I don't feed round bales. I just hang a regular bag in their stall. Probably going to get a net with smaller holes for the geldings because he pulls the hay out of the bag and drops it on the floor.
5. I would pick orchard or Timothy because that's what's available to me. |
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 Miss Laundry Misshap
Posts: 5271
| Mine all get around the same. 4-5lbs of Purina Sr Active with a little bit of 12% purina sweet feed on top.
3 horses, 1 small square of heavy alfalfa and little grass hay. Sometimes a little more than a bale depending on if we find a small bale. |
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 Take a Picture
Posts: 12842
| Mine are out on a pasture 24/7. They get 3 pounds of a pelleted feed 14% from a local feed mill twice a day, morning and night. Performance horses get Platinum Performance and the others get Grostrong minerals once a day. I have a couple that get electrolytes if I think they are not drinking enough. They get hay twice a say in the winter. |
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 Three in a Bikini
Posts: 2035
| 1. How much grain do you feed? 0.5 lbs of Purina Senior feed.
2. How often to you feed a day? 1x / Day
3. Free choice hay? What kind? Free choice round bale.
4. Any had any luck with round bale hay nets???? YES. Best decision I have made in a while. 1 hay bale with 2 horses was lasting me 2 weeks. With the net I have extended that to 3 weeks consistently.
5. Orchard/timothy vs coastal Bermuda? Bermuda.
I also have a vitamin lick out for them.
They are not heavily conditioned. I ride and compete a max of 3x/week. The more they are ridden the more I feed on the grain. |
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 Elite Veteran
Posts: 851
Location: West Texas | 5.5 lbs Exemplify HP and 12 lbs of Alfa-Lux hay cubes, split between two feedings. |
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Expert
Posts: 2685
| 1. 7# per head per day (Blue Bonnet Equilene)
2. Grain twice a day
3. Free choice Teff grass round bales because my grass is crap
4. My round bales are nothing short of 1400# so I put mine in panels. Works great.
5. I love how soft Bermuda is but Timothy/orchard will be longer stemmed so.... |
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Elite Veteran
Posts: 883
Location: Southern Indiana | Easy keepers get about 3 lbs of kalm n ez
Hard keeper gets 1 heavy scoop of kalm n ez and half scoop of accelerate sweet feed (was doing 1 of each but cut back) about 7lbs
Feed hay & grain morning and night pasture at night 3/4 of the year.
When on pasture they get 1 flake of alfalfa and a flake or so of grass hay. Usually orchard grass or fescue. They only get as much grass hay as they'll clean up. If they waste a bunch I cut back. In the winter they basically get as much grass hay as they'll eat and a flake of Alfalfa. We do not use any slow feeders but put nets over round bales if we feed them. I usually just fork it off the round bale and feed by serving in a net or a feeder.
Definitely orchard grass/Timothy over coastal but I've never fed coastal. Kalm ultra is pretty high powered I fed it before but the accelerate/kalm ez mix is working well for my hard keeper.
Edited by TheDutchMan01 2017-09-08 10:59 PM
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Extreme Veteran
Posts: 534
Location: Ohio girl moved to PA | Can i ask what your goal is? are you trying to bulk up for winter? Just curious so we can help you a little better!
1. 6lbs a day Kalm n EZ (1 gets DAC cool gut AM; 1 gets AV juice PM; both on Actiflex)
2. twice a day AM/PM
3. Not free choice, but they get 6lbs hay AM/PM with 10+ hours turn out on pasture. I will add a hay bag in stall during winter if they cant be turned out.
4. I think round bales are a waste (with my two atleast) i have a pig that will eat eat eat like hes been starved and the other is a diva that does what HE wants & will **** all over it lol
5. I prefer orchard/timothy/alfalfa and ours has some clover too.
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Expert
Posts: 1695
Location: Willows, CA | Most of our horses get the following
1 - 1.5 pounds of Renew Gold total per day. Some are trial horses and they get whatever Renew Gold test products that I am developing at the time depending on needs.
two feedings per day
I have used the porta grazer with success. I pretty much keep hay in front of the ones that don't have access to pasture every day. The ones that do live on pasture get about 10 pounds of hay per day in two feedings during the time of year that the pasture is week. In general though, my pasture is pretty good and offers a good basic support. Added hay drops to about 4 pounds per day when the pasture is good, and I feed that at the same time that I give them Renew Gold.
Round bales are not available in my area, and I don't care much for them if they were.
I feed the best mixed hay that I can find. I like about 25% alfalfa in it.
The only thing that I add to this is Redmond Salt. '
We have no mineral deficiencies in my area, so additional mineral support is not needed. The Renew Gold provides Fat soluble vitamins missing from the rest of the diet, and a proper, fully functioning hind gut does the rest for water soluble vitamins. Blood work on my horses is spectacular.
The only other thing in my program is strict attention to dental needs, proper parasite control, and annual vet checks. Of these three points, teeth problems is the one missed the most by horse owners.
Pretty simple.
Edited by winwillows 2017-09-11 6:24 PM
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