The first piece of advice I’d give anyone with more than a passing interest in equine feed and who wants to get the most out of prepared horse feeds is to be prepared to fork out the green backs for it. From my experience, you cannot afford to save and scrimp when it comes to horse grain. Quite the contrary – you’ve got to buy the best on the market. The reasons for this are multiple and compelling:
First of all, the cheaper varieties will almost certainly be composed of a very basic mixture that the manufacturers call a “pre-mix”. This is minerals and vitamins that they add to the horse grain. It’s not what you want to feed horse, ideally speaking. The more expensive horse feeds will have formulas that are designed to be of maximum benefit to your specific horse type. In addition, they will be easily digestible formulas; something that is very important for the complex digestive system of a horse. This means that you should avoid having to put additional powders, pellets, rice bran oil and what not into the feed as well.
The second reason is that the more expensive horse grain will tend not to have any foreign particle thrown in with it. For the cheaper brands, all sorts of other stuff might get thrown in with it, bumping up the weight of the package and making you feel like you’re getting value for money when in fact, you’re probably not. The more expensive stuff tends to be pure grain and no sand.
Another reason why the cheaper brands are cheaper is because of the policy they use in filling the bags. According to what’s the cheapest grain out there at any given time, you can have all sorts of ingredients going into the bag. With the premium stuff, however, you will know precisely what’s in the bag; something which is helpful in managing your horse’s health. For example, if your horse has a rare allergy to fish oil for horses, you want to be sure that there isn’t any of that in the feed. Essentially, you’re not guaranteed to know precisely what’s in the feed if you go with the cheaper brand.
Of course, before all that you need to understand what sort of formula your horse needs. Moving from a few extra alfalfa cubes and some rice bran oil onto more sophisticated formula that makes up the modern equine feed is a step that should be calculated carefully before you take it. Do you calculations twice..
The sweet type feeds are the ones that your horse will simply horse down with relish. With these, you also have the advantage of being able to inspect the quality of the individual grains in them.
The pellet form of feed is normally of the very digestible sort. This is because the grain has been ground up and horses that might have been finicky about their food won’t be able to isolate the things they’d prefer not to eat. So, the horses tend to eat the whole lot.
If you’re looking at senior horse feed, then the pellets are a good option because they can be soaked for easier chewing and that’s important to the older horse, as well as to the younger ones whose teeth might not yet be so developed.
The other types are extruded feeds. These are actually cooked horse food, which means that the nutrients are more digestible than with the raw variety. The large format – known as kibble – will get your horse to chew that much more, allowing him to horse it down with less speed, which is good for his digestive system.
