If your horse won’t eat the hay at rides, how about pelleted hay? You’d need to soak it probably, but it
might be more palatable and you might have more choices than baled hay. Carrots
are always a good addition on ride day. Feeding a few carrots or handfuls of oats
or sweet feed 15 min before a vet check can give your horse energy and spark
their appetite. Have some of the baled hay on hand “just in case”
the horse decides he likes it during a ride. Adding oats and a little sweet
feed (if needed to make it palatable for your horse) to the mash at a ride won’t
hurt your horse if he’s already accustomed to eating it. You don’t
want to make a big meal of oats (rather than corn),
however, including oats, a little sweet feed and a little rice bran is not a
bad thing to do. Fats shouldn’t be fed in large quantities at a ride
either, however, if a cup of rice bran will help your horse take in more mash, don’t be afraid to use it. Some of the rides
that provide mashes usually include beet pulp and oats.
Regarding the daily concoction…corn is not the best feed for horses, you might be better off replacing all the corn and
sweet feed with oats if the horse will still eat it. If not, try for more oats
than sweet feed.
I admit though, I’m not an expert…
Kathy
OK, have a nutrition/feed question for the experts...
I am chief research geek (meaning, i surf the
net a lot) for a friend who does 50's and is hoping to move up to longer rides
soon. Her horse is a finicky eater, and is on the lean side. Normal
diet is grass pasture, with daily bucket of beet pulp with a concoction of
oats, sweet feed, corn and the usual minerals/supplements mixed in, along with
a lot of pleading to get him to finish it. He won't eat beet pulp alone, the other stuff is for the added fat and to get him
to eat it.
So aside from teh daily adventure of trying
to get him to finish his bucket, my question, as chief researcher, is what to
feed him during the ride itself....
I should mention here that while it would be great to give him
free choice tasty hay, any hay with alfalfa in it causes him metabolic problems, he's a bit sensitive to it. and because we board, our choices of hay is a bit
limited to what they have on hand, which is suffering a bit from the drought
we're having. so the grass hay we're offering
him, he's turning his nose up at.
So back to what to feed him during teh vet
hold...he won't eat straight beet pulp. He eagerly eats grain, but if i understand susan's nutrition
articles correctly, grain during a ride would not
be the best choice....Or is a limited amount OK? If so, what amount
is safe?
Or is there a complete feed that would be OK to give him, that would be
digested differently then corn or sweet feed?
am looking foward
to the advice from you veterans and veterinarians out there! :)
