RE: [RC] "Feeding the Hoof"- Just Curious - Mary Sutliff
It is not at all hard to put this info into practice. We buy anywhere from 4 to 8 tons of timothy at a time. We have a gorer and send the samples to EquiAnalytical for analysis. Cost is $40 not counting postage. Results can be emailed to you and it only takes a couple of days. Then we send the results to Dr. Kellon who for a fee sends us the formula for minerals to balance the hays nutrition. I send that info to Horse Tech or Uckele and within a week we have our custom supplement. Since we have an insulin resistant horse this is routine for us. You can also purchase the minerals and make up your own supplement but the only way to be sure it's done right is to have the hay analysied & go from there.
Mary S.
From: FXLivestock@xxxxxxx Date: Thu, 14 Aug 2008 19:29:01 -0400 Subject: Re: [RC] "Feeding the Hoof"- Just Curious To: ridecamp@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
I really wonder how practical it is to test hay if you don't buy in quantity. It seems that if you don't buy all your hay at one time and from one source that testing would have to be done quite frequently depending on how often you buy forage, where you buy, and where the broker is getting the forage. I know when I used to buy in small quantities that quality of the forage could change from load to load even if I was buying from the same feed store.
I am not sure how practical it is for most horse owners in CA (who buy hay by the bale or in small quantities several times a year) to invest in testing forage. I know some horse owners that buy hay on a weekly basis. Perhaps endurance riders would do this kind of testing but I find it hard to believe that the average horse owner would do this.
Terry, do you know the amount (tonage) that most mills require to formulate a concentrate ration for an individual horse owner? I was always under the impression that it was quite a large amount but my experience was in a specific ration that was being formulated for a large herd of Angora goats. Again, I wonder how practical this is for the average horse owner.
It is great that all this information is available but I wonder how easy it is to really put in practice considering that in many areas (again thinking of So Cal) that there are very few choices when it comes to keeping horses.
