Horse food that is.
Riv has been eating basically the same thing every day for almost a year now:
- About 20 pounds of locally grown hay (sometimes better quality, sometimes not so great, but usually not too bad)
- About 3 pounds Tribute Calm-N-EZ (low non-structural carbs, high fat, no corn, no molasses)
- Anywhere from a cup and a half to half a cup (depending on the time of year) stabilized rice bran
- Anywhere from half a scoop to a scoop and a half (again, depending on time of year) beet pulp, soaked up in warm water of course.
With adapting the rice bran/beet pulp depending on what he needed (less in the summer, more in the winter), he's been gaining and then keeping weight quite well and I have been very, very pleased. This is a horse that was on 5 pounds of high-cal sweet feed twice a day when I got him (in very light work), so we've come a long way!
We found a new trimmer recently and so far I'm quite happy with her work, though of course we'll have to see how it goes long-term. Anyhow we were discussing food. She recommended switching his supplemental forage from beet pulp to some kind of an alfalfa mix, saying that she had seen repeated issues with beet pulp making shelly, chippy bare feet.
I've never heard of such a thing. She thinks it's that all U.S. beet pulp is genetically modified--I would lean toward the idea that it would be because all beet pulp has a fair amount of sugar, even if it doesn't have molasses added--but either way I am curious. I know SO many people who feed beet pulp quite successfully and obviously it hasn't been a terrible thing for us, but alfalfa blend would have less sugar and overall higher calories.
Any thoughts? I am leery of changing feed in late November, but I am curious!
