Has anybody used Wellsolve w/c by Purina Mills?

Question

This is a newer feed that is formulated for overweight insulin resistant and or laminitic horses. If you have experience with it, please tell me how it worked for your horse.

Answer 1

Well, I think you have two feeds mixed up.  There is WellSolve W/C and WellSolve L/S.  The L/S is designed for horses who need low starch and sugar in their diets like cushings, insulin resistant, or laminitic horses.  They are not perscription diets and will not cure your horse.  They are designed for the horse with special needs.

About WellSolve W/C (weight control)-

It is specifically designed for the overweight horse or if you wish to maintain the current weight it works great for that too. This feed is proven to help a horse lose weight, as long as it is fed properly. In their tests the data showed that the control group (the ones who did not recieve the W/C and a regular diet of hay and grains adjusted to restrict calories.) really did not lose much weight. (Well, the exception in the data is when there was a freak snow storm around week 3 where all the horses weight dropped significantly.) The second group who were on the W/C feed with no exercise did lose weight slow and steadly. The last group who were fed the W/C and worked regularly (really worked, not just 20 mins of a hack.) dropped more weight then all three. For about the first 3 weeks all the horses lost about the same amount of weight. But, after the 3 weeks is where the weight loss differed. The control group continued to lose a slow and steady rate. The group being feed the W/C with no exercise lost more then the first group. An average of about 50 pounds. The last group lost an average of 90 pounds who were being worked at 90 minutes a week and working up to 180 minutes. The trials were over 6 week periods.

Now as I have had to mention to just about every person who I design feeding programs for, YOU MUST FEED BY WEIGHT AND NOT SCOOPS.

Some great key points about this feed:

-Contains ideal levels of digestible energy to help manage caloric intake and weight control while maintaining a healthy body condition.

-Its an extruded pellet so that you can still give full scoops of the desired weight to be fed. Because the air is puffed into the pellet it weighs less resulting in you being about to feed full scoops. This helps with the idea that when you reduce feed sometimes you feel like youre starving your horse with only a 1/2 or 1/3 a scoops. You dont feed like youre starving your horse with such a small amount of another feed like oats.

-Its highly palatable and horses love the taste.

-There are less then 15% soluble carbohydrates (sugar and starch). Instead, it’s formulated with fermentable fibers and other low calorie nutrient sources.

-No molasses, no grains, no added fats

-Veterinarian researched

The link below is the page with much more detailed information.

http://www.wellsolveequine.com/

About WellSolve L/S

In my opinion, the best high quality low starch and sugar feed is the new WellSolve L/S (L/S meaning low starch) by Purina. It has been researched for 6 years now. It GUARANTEES the starch and sugars to be less then 11%. NO OTHER feed guarantees their starches and sugars. Sure they say they are low starch or even safe starch but you can not find any guarenteed analysis of that on the bag.

It contains no grains and no molasses. Digestible/ fermentable fibers are used as an alternative energy source instead of carbohydrates. The vitamins and minerals that are added to this feed are formulated for the special needs horses. There is also added biotin as well. The feed is designed to meet the nutritional requirements of a special needs horse (with forage being fed too.) so that you don't need to supplement. The only supplement that is not added to the feed is a joint supplement. Its extremely expensive to put it in a feed and if not feed properly (according to weight) it wont do anything or you will be overdosing your horse with too much. The feed is highly palatable too.

When fed properly to a horse, this feed showed no spikes in the insulin and glucose response. For the insulin and glucose response in the horse, its as if they did not even eat anything. They even researched what feed form gave the lowest response too. The pellet form its in now is what gave the least amount of change. While a horse was eating they took blood every hour to monitor how it was affecting the horse. Thousands of vials of blood were drawn to research how it affected the horse.

Just remember this is NOT a perscription diet so it should be available at your local feed store as long as they are certified to carry it. The feed will not cure your horse, it will provide balanced nutrition for a horse with specail needs. Its also ideal for horses with laminitis and cushings.

You can check out the full research on it here:

http://www.wellsolveequine.com/

For forage you will still want to feed 1-1.5% of the horses body weight. The back of the bag has a table that reccomends the amount of feed to be fed and you adjust accordingly depending on how much roughage youre feeding your horse.

The clients who use these feeds love them and so do their horses.

NOTE: for the overweight horses who were fed properly according to the bag it did help with weight because they are getting what they need for their bodies and nothing extra.  I would suggest starting with the reccomended amount for the L/S and forage.  Give it 2 weeks and then adjust from there.  If they are really overweight, then I would feed one pound less of the L/S.  Just remember they are guide lines on the bag.  Monitoring your horse daily will be best and adjust accordingly.  But give it time to work, a horse who is very overweight will need time to safetly lose the weight.   Rapid weight loss is not safe nor heathy for the animal.

Answer 2

I have an insider look into this product and other horse feeds and this product is one of the better ones.  It is correctly balanced for horses with those problems and will provide the other nutrients needed as well.  I have friends with horses on it and their horses have little to no problems anymore.