Nutrition...?

Question

What's the best way to put weight on an underweight horse? I just bought a horse who needs to put on 150 to 200 pounds. My sister (who has been keeping for the last few days) has been feeding him sweet feed and beet pulp. I'm not real sure about the nutritional value of beet pulp. She's bring him here on Sunday. Should I continue with the beet pulp?

Answer 1

Try rice bran. It has a higher fat content than any other feed, and you can feed it to them in bulk without having to worry about colic. It is about the only thing I've found that can put and keep weight on my 18 year old TB mare. For weight gain, I have to feed 6lbs of it a day mixed with 6lbs of Senior.

A lot of people like to feed beet pulp. It helps too but it's main function is as a source of digestible fiber. So it's almost like giving them more forage, like grass hay, it's just more digestible. But it's not necessarily that high in fat. Beet pulp can actually be used as a source of fiber/roughage when no hay or grass is available.

Rice bran, on the other hand, contains a lot of calories from fat to put the weight on a horse. It has 1/3 more calories than beet pulp, by weight. (i.e. you'd have to feed 1.3 pounds of beet pulp to get the same calories as you'd get from 1 pound of rice bran). This is a big reason why I prefer it...it's more cost effective. However, rice bran can have a mineral imbalance, so if you feed more than about 2 pounds of it, you should make sure a horse's diet is supplemented with a mineral block and/or a complete feed (hence why I feed Senior as well--if your horse is younger I'd try Strategy or something like that instead instead although Senior would work too).

Don't feed sweet feed. It's not a lasting source of energy. It's like eating a bunch of sugar...it will just make your horse hot, not necessarily make him gain weight. Any feed with high amounts of corn or molasses will do that.

Answer 2

The beet pulp is okay, as long as you soak it. It sucks up their stumach acids and can kill them. My aunt has a similar problem. She switched to a !0% protien 10% fat food. THat might help. Good luck!

Answer 3

I agree with black bunny, dump the sweet feed.

and for the record feeding dry beep pulp DOES NOT suck out the stomach acids and kill horses. If it did my horses would have been dead 15 years ago, but they are still living and still eating dry beat pulp with no health issues.

There is NO greater risk of feeding dry beet pulp then feeding ANY OTHER feed. IF a horse is going to choke it will choke REGARDLESS of what it is fed!

Additionally People continue to FAIL to realize that the digestive juices are TOTALLY different then the water the beet pulp is soaked in. A horses stomach juices ARE NOT mostly water but Digestive ACIDS that are breaking DOWN the beet pulp as it hits the stomach and on in to the digestive tract.

RESEARCH studies have proven that there is NO GREATER risk to your horses health in feeding beet pulp dry. Feeding beet pulp dry is NO different than feeding Alfalfa pellets, except that the alfalfa pellets I have seen are much larger in size then the beet pulp pellets are IMO a greater choke risk than beet pulp. Yet no one points out these risks when feeding alfalfa pellets.

Beet pulp is feed to cows, other livestock and is EVEN found in some dog foods and yet No other group has as many myths and falsehoods about beet pulp as the equine community.

You know it is funny that Beet pulp ALONE has this bad reputation, BUT the MAIN ingredient in almost all SENIOR feed is BEET pulp and people are feeding senior feed DRY daily with no problems. Just because senior feed is in a smaller pellet it does not mean that there is any less risk of choke, it just means that a horse eatting the smaller pellet Can get MORE pellets in their mouth at the same time.

http://www.triplecrownfeed.com/senioring...

The ingredients of the Triple crown senior feed #1 ingredient is beet pulp

http://www.buckeyenutrition.com/equi...o...

#3 ingredient Beet pulp

http://www.seminolefeed.com/pdf_files/se...

Beet pulp based forage

http://www.agwayfeed.com/compare_senior....

Also main fiber source from beet pulp

http://www.lmffeeds.com/lmf_senior_horse...

Beet pulp and Alfalfa

http://horse.purinamills.com/product...i...

Uses alfalfa as the forage base

Did you know that alfalfa pellets can swell to at least 3 times there size also!! According to a nutritionist in one of the websites.

Additonally on the labeling. IF there was a great a danger as people mistakenly believe, there would have already been a lawsuit AND the feed companies would have placed a DO NOT feed dry on the label. As it is my bags give the feeding directions for feeding it dry.

Beet pulp has been used for YEARS to feed cattle( both dairy and beef cows), Sheep and goats, and pigs and horses. Beet pulp was also tested as a feed for chickens, but it is not what chickens can properly use as a feed source.

Feeding is always a personal choice, I feed beet pulp either way I choose on some days to feed it dry and I choose on some days to soak it.

Answer 4

Keep the beet pulp and get rid of the sweet feed.

Then add rice bran and alfalfa or grass pellets to the beet pulp.

Beet is for fiber

alfalfa or grass for protein

rice bran for fat

Then make sure the horse has access to quality grass hay during the day.  Feeding several small amounts during the day is better than one big 'feast' at night.

Break it into 3 hay meals if you can.  If not, hay in am and hay and pulp mixture at pm meal.

Answer 5

I'm in California and if I have a horse who's starting to look a bit "ribby" or I've purchased some rack of bones,  I go out and buy a 50LB sack of A&M (Ground alfafa and molasses) (In the mid west they use beet pulp BUT I've been informed that you HAVE to add water to it or it will swell in a horse's belly causing colic), dump it into a tub or feeder in the horse's stall, then top it with some rolled barley corn that is mixed with corn oil and apple cider vinegar. (I feed a 3LB coffee can of the barley corn mixture once a day.) The horse will normally devour the first couple of bags of A&M, but then they will slack off as they get used to it (Never had an issue with colic or founder)...

I haven't fed oats or any mixed feed in decades, basically because I've had running horses and TBs I'm trying to keep quiet, so I feed the rolled barley corn mixture to them for weight, NOT heat.

I also give my horses a hot bran mash twice a week with the vinegar and corn oil (I can mix the barleycorn into it.).  I feed 1/2 a 3 LB coffee can of red wheat flakey bran and add enough water to it so that it looks like oatmeal in consistancy.

I make sure that they get 2 flakes of alfafa hay per feeding.

Answer 6

First and foremost, you need to check his teeth to make sure that he doesn't need them floated.  If they are very uneven, he's not going to be able to chew his food and get any nurtritional value from it.  Consult with your vet if you find any hooks or barbs on his teeth at all.  An easy way to check without having to pull his mouth open and prod around would be to watch him eat his feed.  If he seems to be dropping a huge amount of feed and it getting really foamy and frothy with saliva, high chances are he needs his teeth done.

Depending on the age of your horse, you need to find a feed that is complimentary to the age of your horse and its activity level.  Say, he's a pleasure riding horse, and you ride him quite a few times a week, all the way to a low level competition horse, I would feed him Purina Born to Win.  I also would supplement Amplify, which is a Purina feed as well (I think!) and has a high fat content that really seems to work.  I had a very high energy Quarter Horse mare that was very similarly built to a Thoroughbred, and she was difficult to keep weight on.  I started implementing Amplify to her feed, and I saw results in as quickly as two weeks.  It's a bit spendy, but in the long run is rather cost effective as you don't have to feed nearly as much as you do with beet pulps and sweet feeds to see results.  It also helped her skin and coat look much healthier.  I am an advocate of Purina's Born to Win, as its rather inexpensive, and I have seen the great results for myself, from mane and tail growth to healthy muscle and weight gain.

Hope this helped in some way, and best of luck with your new horse!