chandab
Well-Known Member
He has a tiny snip going into the top of the left nostril, but I'll check below his right nostril, just in case I missed something.
As to Honey, I've gone pretty basic with her; she's a B-size mare, so keep that in mind with the amounts she is getting. I may have to increase it more, but I'm not sure yet. [Ok, I'm going to do it the lazy way, here's a copy/paste from an e-mail I sent to a friend.]
She's now getting beet pulp, oats, rice bran, the tim/alf cubes for now, grazing/hay plus her supplements. I don't know if I'm feeding her enough yet, but that's next to figure out. Daily, she gets 4 cups of beet pulp shreds (10oz), 3 cups oats (8-10oz), 1 cup timothy pellets, 1/2 cup rice bran pellets, 5-8 tim/alf cube pieces; split into 3 meals.
Plus at the moment she's getting a tablespoon of split peas to increase her protein, but that'll be changing to whey protein isolate as soon as the peas are gone (the peas are so hard, I'm not sure how easy they are for her to eat). This diet is my spin-off of what the farrier told me to feed her plus a couple of things I had in the feed shed to try. I know many will say feed lots of alfalfa, but it didn't seem to be working when she was getting quite a bit of the tim/alf cubes, so I thought I'd go with his recommendation (although, he never really did tell me an amount). Farrier said to put her on oats, beet pulp and 1 cup corn oil (I already had the rice bran pellets, so went with them, as they are less messy) plus a vit/min sup. She also gets several supplements and herbs, but the main supplements for normal horses would be the 1 oz of stabilized flax, 800IU Vit E (two 400IU people gelcaps, natural vit e is better, but synthetic is ok), and a probiotic (we're trying SmartDigest right now).
Broken down, she gets:
AM; 1 cup beet pulp shreds, 1/2 cup oats (might increase this to 1c), and 1/4 rice bran pellets. plus one herb [since its shreds, I feed this dry, and she's just fine]
Mid-day; 2 cups beet pulp shreds, 1/2 cup oats, 6-8 tim/alf cubes, all mixed and then soaked (I mix it at AM feeding, then soak til after lunch) [i'm using a 4# Remission tub for a soaking bucket, I put the bp and oats in then add the cubes til there is a single layer around the bottom, give or take a few.]
PM; 1 cup beet pulp shreds, 1 cup oats, 1/4 cup rice bran pellets (might add another 1/4 c if necessary), 1 cup tim pellets (or however many will fit into the 1 qt dish I put her feed in while mixing) plus all her supplements. [this meal gets the extra oats hoping it'll help her to eat all her supps, so far, she's doing pretty good. I really don't want to have to soak more than one meal in winter.]
I know she'd prefer a sweet feed, and many might go there, but when the vet was out and we did tests, she had high blood glucose, so I'm trying to avoid sweet feeds and see if her system gets back to normal. I'm stlil not sure about the oats, considering where her glucose was, but since nothing else was working, I thought I'd try the farrier's recommendations.
