From: Marie
Dear Jessica, my horse is eighteen and a slow eater. He's thinner than I want him to be even though I feed him a lot of hay. They give a flake morning and evening at my boarding barn, plus ten pounds of grain. I am paying extra so that he will get TWO flakes of hay in the morning and two at night, plus the regular grain. Three of the horses at the barn have been bad with colic in the last year, and the vet who came out for two of the cases (the other one has a different vet) said that they all needed more hay and less grain. He suggested feeding them a lot of hay and no grain, just a vitamin mineral mix, or else feeding them a lot of hay and some pelleted feed with the vitamins and minerals already in it. I asked him about grain for my horse because he is losing weight, and he said pellets would be better for him too.
Yesterday I asked the barn manager if he would make the change and he said the vet didn't know what he was talking about, horses can't gain weight unless they get grain, and they can't be healthy unless they get grain. He said pellets are made of the cr*p that the feed mills sweep off their floors, it's all stuff that feed mills used to throw out, it's grain that's too bad quality to go in regular grain or sweet feed, plus a lot of dust and dirt, and it's made into pellets with green food coloring to fool horse owners into buying it. He said you can always tell that it's cr*p because if you give a horse two buckets and one has sweet feed and the other has pellets, the horse will want the sweet feed every time.
The barn manager has a lot of really expensive horses here so I am sure he knows what he is talking about. He said that the vet just knows about backyard horses and not about performance horses and futurity horses. (Most of the horses at this barn are futurity horses here to be trained). He also said that I shouldn't be giving my horse four flakes of hay every day unless I double his grain too, because the hay will give him a big belly and keep him from digesting his grain that he needs to be warm (it's still pretty cold here) and stay healthy. I just don't know who to believe. Help me please please! I want my horse to be healthy and I thought giving him more hay was the right thing, but now I am worried that he needs more grain and I don't know what to do. Are pellets really just cr*p that falls on the floor when they're making real feed? Will four flakes of hay in one day make him sick? I love my horse and I don't want to make him sick, but I can see that even though he is loosing weight, his belly looks different and lower than the futurity horses bellies. This vet is not as old as the barn manager, so maybe he just doesn't know very much yet, like about how pellets are made? Or maybe the barn manager is right and you treat fancy expensive horses one way and "regular" horses another way, and the vet doesn't understand about expensive horses? I just want to do what's right. My horse isn't fancy and he is old but I love him.
Marie
Four flakes of hay a day - unless these are large, heavy, ten-pound flakes - is about the minimum that you can afford to give your horse if you want him to have a healthy digestive system. Don't worry about your horse developing a "hay belly" - he's not getting enough hay to do that, and even if he were, a hay belly isn't the worst thing in the world. He's eighteen years old and it's unlikely that any part of him, from mouth to belly to hooves, is going to look like the same structures on a futurity horse. Your horse is an older horse; futurity horses are babies. The ones you're looking at may not even be two years old yet, and a very young horse will always look slimmer and sleeker than a horse that "has some age on him".
I know that at a lot of Western barns, the feeding tradition is "a flake of hay and a couple of cans of grain". It sounds as though your barn manager follows that tradition. What your horse needs is more nutrition - that is, more appropriate food, not just "more food". He needs more good hay. If he's no longer able to digest hay adequately, I would try feeding him hay cubes. If he isn't able to digest those adequately, I would try feeding him alfalfa pellets - which are simply another form of alfalfa hay. If your vet hasn't already had a close look at your horse's teeth, it's time to ask him to do that. Some horses get thinner as they get older, just because their teeth need floating more often and they aren't able to chew their feed as well as they used to. Pellets can be a great asset to a nutrition program for an older horse with poor dentition - they can be softened with a little warm water, or made into a soupy slurry with more water. The important thing is to get the nutrients your horse needs INTO your horse somehow, while avoiding feeds that will challenge his digestive system. That means more hay in SOME form - and, probably, much less grain.
Let's talk about pellets for a minute. Your barn manager is WAY off base here. Yes, it's perfectly possible to use poor-quality ingredients to make pelleted feed - it's also possible to put very poor-quality ingredients into a hopper with a lot of molasses and call the results "sweet feed". Good companies will not do either of these things.
Pellets made by reputable feed manufacturers are NOT made from rejected grain, dirt, and/or floor sweepings. Good pellets can be made from grain, vitamins and minerals, or (in the case of "complete feed" pellets) they can be made primarily from hay, with SOME grain added, plus vitamins and minerals. You can also buy alfalfa pellets, as I mentioned above.
I know that a lot of people around the USA had a difficult time securing enough hay - not to mention GOOD ENOUGH hay - for their horses this winter. If you're one of the many horse-owners who had to settle for less-than-great hay, and your hay analysis indicates that it isn't going to meet your horse's nutritional needs, you may need to supplement it with another foodsource. In such a case, either hay pellets or pellets made from hay and grain would be preferable to grain. If your hay IS good enough to keep a horse healthy, and you're feeding a vitamin-mineral supplement as well, you can safely mix it with a handful of pellets OR a handful of grain. If you absolutely must feed grain, because the hay is poor-quality and you can't buy hay or hay-and-grain pellets locally, you could try feeding small quantities of whole oats. They are high in fiber and thus less dangerous than most grains.
This vet obviously knows a great deal more about equine nutrition than the barn manager does. You may be right about your horse's age being part of the problem - it's quite possible that the barn manager has never dealt with a horse over the age of 2 or 3, since this barn specializes in futurity horses. That doesn't mean that he's right about feeding those young horses, either - that sort of diet isn't good for them. All it means is that since the oldest horses in the barn are still half-grown babies, he's never had to deal with, or even SEE, the long-term effects of bad nutrition.
The underfeeding of hay, the overfeeding of grain, and the colics are all probably connected. I'll guess that there is little or no turnout at this barn - and that's probably connected to the colics, too.
Talk to the vet you mentioned, who sounds very sensible. It doesn't sound as though you have a vet of your own yet - why not use this one? Your horse needs a good vet who will see him at regular intervals. Tell the vet about your situation, and ask him to suggest some supplements. You - and perhaps your vet as well - will also need to talk to your barn manager about changing your horse's feed to ALL hay, or hay with a vitamin-mineral supplement (in a handful of grain, pellets, or even sweet feed). If the barn manager refuses to feed your horse according to your vet's instructions, you will probably need to move your horse somewhere else.
Your vet might be able to advise you about this, too. When you ask him, be careful - don't ask him something he won't be able to answer, like "What's the best barn in this area?" or "Is there any boarding barn around here where the manager isn't an idiot?" Remember that your vet is a professional who lives and works in this community, and he probably knows all of the barns and barn managers, by reputation at least. If you want a recommendation, be discreet. Don't ask him to say anything bad about anyone. Find out which of the area barns are accepting new boarders, visit them, look at the horses and the stalls and the feed, ask about their feeding program and feeding schedule, find out about their turnout arrangements, and LOOK AT THE HORSES. Then, when you've put together a short list of possible new homes for your horse, call your vet and say "Here are the three places that have openings. You know my horse and his age and his needs - if he were YOUR horse, where would you take him?" That just might get you a helpful answer. You are right to be concerned for your horse, and you can't afford to keep him at a barn where his health and nutrition - and your specific requests, and your vet's recommendations - are all being ignored.
By the way, it's quite true that most horses will eat sweet feed in preference to pellets. They'll also eat sweet feed in preference to straight grain, hay, and just about anything else. Sweet feed is basically grain coated with molasses (which is where the "sweet" comes from). Most horses adore molasses. It's not good for them, but they find it very appealing - their desire to eat molasses isn't based on its nutritional value. Many horses would happily eat paper or plastic bags, or wood shavings, if they were coated with molasses... and quite a few horses have done exactly that. In fact, many horses feel about molasses the same way that many humans feel about chocolate. Some humans will eat anything covered with chocolate - cherries, bananas, potato chips... even ants. I know several humans who would probably eat paper or plastic or wood shavings - or feed mill floor sweepings - if they were covered with enough chocolate. Don't expect horses to be wiser than humans. When it comes to sweets, they're just as silly as we are. ;-)
Jessica
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