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Over the past five years, we have used a variety of horse feeds for our horses. One thing to consider when you buy bagged feed for your horses is why you are feeding your feed. Is it to add minerals, protein, missing nutrients from the forage provided? Is it to add calories and keep weight on your horse? Is it to make you feel like you're doing something nice for your horses or because you have been raised in a tradition of horse-keeping where hard feeds are considered a cornerstone of the management and care of horses? When you sit down and evaluate the goals of your feeding program, you are able to do a better job of assessing your options and choosing what is best to fit those needs and goals.
Dr. Kellon's NRC Plus nutritional course has provided the foundation of our nutrition knowledge, and the dietary calculations and considerations we make are informed by what we learned. This course has been invaluable tp us from a general horse management standpoint, but also in that it allows us to better isolate and address specific nutritional deficiencies because there is less need for trial and error.
Overview
Our horse feeding program is based off of forage. Our horses have free choice access to low starch, low sugar round bales of hay 365 days a year. During the growing season, we are rotationally grazing through our cow pasture by giving the horses access to a small portion of the field for 2-3 days at a time before rotating them.
Hard feeds (horse feed, grains, supplements that come in a bag) are a way for us to add minerals, protein, and fat to their diet that their hay does not provide. In the summer we buy 100 round bales of mixed grass hay and then core sample 50 bales, send the sample off to Equi-Analytical and order their #603 test. This information gives us an idea of what minerals are lacking or out of balance, as well as any nutrients we may need to add. Our hay is typically on the lower side for protein content and since it is mixed grass round bales, it is often lacking in the three limiting amino acids, lysine, methionine, and threonine, which can be supplemented in hard feeds as well.
Calories
Our horses need 16400 kilocalories per day and based off our hay testing, we know that means they will eat around 20 pounds per day. Some feeds add significant calories to a horse's diet, particularly feeds intended for horses in heavy work or older horses with poor teeth who cannot get their nutrients from a forage based diet. It is my opinion that hay is the most important purchase you can make for your feeding program and that it is far better to buy a lot of lower quality hay than it is to spend more money on quality hay that you have to feed sparingly. We used to feed square bales and it was interesting to find that 20 pounds of the high quality square bales had the same caloric density as our lower quality round bales. We spend .04 cents per pound for our hay so we can provide it free choice year round and not worry about wastage. The horse quality square bales around here cost around .16 cents per pound, so it stands to reason that you would want to just feed a few flakes a day per horse. Our hard feeds are not intended to add a significant amount of calories because we believe a horse's primary intake of calories should come from grass or hay. Instead, we use them to add quality proteins, fats, and minerals to balance what they get in the hay.
Protein
Protein is the building block of all cells in the body. Another consideration for horses is that there are three "limiting" amino acids in horses - these are amino acids that horses cannot assemble themselves from other amino acids so they must come directly from the diet. These are lysine, methionine, and threonine. Our round bales are on the lower side for protein, so it is something we like to add to the diet and we opt for additives that boost their diet with these amino acids.
Fat
Fatty acids are another essential part of a horse's diet. For a horse eating primarily grass, adding fat to their diet is typically not needed because the grass has what they need. For those eating primarily hay, additional fat is often needed. Just as with protein, quality matters and we tend to focus on adding fats with a good balance of Omega 3:Omega 6. Good choices for this are flaxseeds, flaxseed oil, camelina oil, and canola oil. Fat is a great way to boost calories for horses who need a little more without adding high energy feeds that tend to make a horse "hot".
Minerals
Last, but certainly not least, is minerals. Horses need a particular amount of given minerals each day as well as needing minerals to be in a balanced ratio. The first and foremost of this is Ca:P. An ideal balance of these two minerals is 2 parts calcium to 1 part phosphorus. Other minerals that may need managing are magnesium, iron, copper, zinc, manganese, and selenium. If your head is starting to spin, I once again recommend you take the NRC Plus course. The money spent will be saved several times over as you learn to get more out of your feeding program.
Feeding for Our Needs
Calories: We don't need to add calories. Even in the winter, as temperatures drop and energy needs rise, our horses have the option to eat as much as they want to generate heat through fermentation and to replace the calories needed to stay warm. Our horses often will eat approximately 50 pounds a day or more when it is below freezing. That would mean feeding an entire bale per horse if you feed square bales, which can get quite expensive.
Protein: We do like adding some quality proteins through the use of hard feeds. Over the past few years, we have added protein with hay pellets made from alfalfa or timothy hay, beet pulp, and Triple Crown bagged feeds that have starch/sugar levels below 11%. The California Trace supplement we use also adds a significant boost of proteins and limiting amino acids.
Fats: When our horses are grazing grasses, we usually don't need to add any additional fats to their diets. However, our horses spend a good portion of the year on hay and the fats in hay tend to degrade with age so adding some fats to a hay-fed horse is a great idea. Our horses get their fat primarily from flax. Flaxseeds have a unique omega 3:6 profile that closely mimics that of grass, which could be seen as the ideal diet for a horse. When we need to add more fat, we like to stick with organic fats and those that are high in omega 3's that compliment the other ingredients in our feed mix, so we use organic canola oil. Flaxseed oil tends to go rancid quickly, rice bran oil has a higher omega 6 content, and camelina oil costs quite a bit more than canola. We have been pleased with our combination of flaxseed and canola oil, and we like that using a liquid oil allows us to customize each horse's daily feed mix to meet their needs. There is something to be said for being able to increase or decrease proteins and fats to customize it for each horse's specific needs. For a horse losing topline, we like to focus on quality proteins, for a horse with a dull coat or with more general weight loss, we add fats. Likewise, for our easy keepers, we drop the fat but keep some quality proteins, a modest amount of omega 3's, and minerals.
Minerals: Our mineral of choice has long been California Trace. We have found better results feeding this mineral than any other we have tried, which includes custom mineral mixes made specifically to balance our hay and which include many of the same ingredients as the Cal Trace. California Trace utilizes what we know about forages in most of North America (and other parts of the world) and adds protein, copper and zinc that is usually lacking, along with iodine, selenium, Vitamins A and E, and biotin. You will find many other supplements which add other minerals as well. However, they often contain an excess of iron which already tends to be too high in pastures, hay, and water supplies. Anything with added iron can cause problems by binding up copper and zinc, so focusing on using feeds and supplements that do not contain added iron is important. California Trace provides everything that is needed and avoids adding anything that may already be overabundant in a horse's diet. This single supplement has made more of a difference in our horse's hoof and coat health than any other thing we have ever done. I cannot recommend it strongly enough. Other options we have heard good results from are KIS Trace, Vermont Blend, and individual copper and zinc from Uckele.
Feeds and mineral carriers we have fed and liked are Modesto Milling organic horse feed, Triple Crown Lite, Triple Crown Senior, and Stabul1 Plus. There are many, many horse feeds on the market but these are the pre-mixed ones we have had the best results with. If you need to buy your feed at a feed store, I highly recommend the Triple Crown feeds. They are decently priced, are low starch and low sugar (for a starch sensitive horse, definitely go with the Lite), they have wonderful proteins and fats in it, are highly digestible with pre and probiotics, and have a good mineral profile without added iron. For horses needing weight and who are not overly starch sensitive, we found that Triple Crown Senior fed at a rate of 3 pounds per horse combined with 1 pound of Triple Crown Lite met almost all of our protein, fat, and mineral needs, we had happy and healthy horses and just used 1/2 serving of Cal Trace to top off minerals. Another convenient option is the Stabul1 feed, since you can just order it online and it ships to your house. This is an excellent feed and one that can entice the pickiest eaters. It is low starch and low sugar with a really impressive balance of nutrients. We like the Plus version best, but they do have an original version that is available in several different flavors as well.
For an organic option, the Modesto Milling feed is really excellent. We love the ingredient list, how fresh it is, and the minerals in it are well balanced. Once again, it could be fed by itself per the instructions on the bag. EDITED TO ADD: We fed this spring-summer of 2021 and were pleasantly surprised at the results. Our current organic mix is about 1/2 the cost of the Modesto, though, so we have opted for the more time consuming, but less expensive option and the horses are doing just as well as they did on the Modesto. We do use a full serving of Cal Trace, since our custom mix doesn't have added minerals in it.
Whatever you decide to feed your horses, do make sure you are meeting their basic calorie, protein, fat, and mineral needs and spend some time considering what your horse needs added to their diet. Just picking up a bag of feed from the feed store may not be the best, or even simplest, option for your horses.