O, no, Diane! I'm sorry.
It's also so weird how we all have different responses when we feed different products.
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I remember when I was in Germany and went to my first riding stable there. Essentially they were feeding straw, it was beautiful and gold and not dusty but so weird to see it in their feeders and not under their hooves!! I was in shock, to say the least. And the horses were short coated & glossy, round/fit and happy!
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Until we came down to NC, I'd never even heard of feeding Beet Pulp (1997). Yet, I spent the bulk of my formative "horse years" in a state that produced a lot of the Sugar Beets that went into those bags. We also had never fed Bran (wheat or oat) - in a wet mash. While I had family in OH that bred raised & raced harness horses, we weren't involved and I have no idea to this day what they fed their horses - but I bet it was totally different than what we fed in CO,
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When we arrived here in NC in April 1997, I was told right on the first day, that our 3 Shetlands were too fat (and so was the larger pony mare, and small horse mare) and that there was a good possibility they would succumb to heat exhaustion/stroke (well we did go from -75* <blizzard w/ windchill> to 110* in 14 days - would have been shorter amount of time if had been pro hauler not dealing with breakdown on the highway, storm flooding in MN, young children or other animals at the time as well). Then the coastal hay - when ours were eating a mix of meadow (CRP - Chanda knows what that stands for I can't remember)/alfalfa and no or very little grain. I didn't force the ponies to lose weight - they sure weren't happy with the hay at first and to be honest - ALL the out of state ponies have had issues when introduced to the hays/forage around here over the years.
AJ - 2 weeks after arriving in NC - already trimmed down a lot
She has lost a considerable amount of round here already!
Patty stayed fairly round - even after bouncing in the single axle, home made stock trailer for 3500 miles, foaling 1 month earlier than expected just days after we arrived in NC, and having no milk to feed this foal at first. She was also being ridden daily at this point - part of it on a lead line and part of it on a lounge line and part of it loose.
Stuffy is 11 months old here, we've been in NC for 12 days. Even when she shed out in July (2nd pic) she was a decent weight even after losing a pretty big amount.
We arrived in NC with two other horses - a pinto ArabX and her solid chestnut yearling by a Paint stallion. I don't have pics of them on the internet, weird. Had never realized I didn't put their pics in albums anywhere (had some directly on previous websites, just not in photo albums). They were pretty round, too, and lost weight nicely under the new feeding program(s).
So, I learned about Coastal hay - in an area where the hay producers knew what kinds they were planting and were willing to work with you if your horses didn't eat what they had. Many grew more than one type and could swap them around. Since we moved to this area of NC (50-60 miles north of where we were in 2004; another 20 miles NW in 2014/15), the hay producers only seem to know that they have Coastal OR aren't willing to share the type that they have. When I recently went looking for different types of seed, I couldn't find the various numbers that they had "out" in 1997-2004 when I was further south.
I learned to feed different feeds, introduced beet pulp and bran. Ours did well on the beet pulp but very, very bad on the recommended feeding program of bran 1x/week. I treated for many colics during that time frame, especially the Shetlands, and finally associated it with the bran and quit and the weekly colic episodes went away! Now, if I can get bran in smaller quantities, I will feed it as a mash for up to 3 days after a foal is born, but usually can't get it that way. The mares seem to do well with it for that time frame and like it. In my studies on bran, after I got into the internet, I found that bran has a tendency to clean out both the bad and the good of the gut flora and CAN bring on colic. I haven't been too interested in re-introducing it...
Beet Pulp is funny. I've seen it work well as a forage for horses - it's high in fiber and low in protein and fat - and I've seen horses gain a ton of weight on it. I've also seen it go the other way! Really depends on the horses. You can get it here, now, w/o molasses (costs more), in shreds or pellets (costs more & more stuff added!). When we first got here in April '97, after that initial heat wave, we made it up, covered it and left it in the cement block building we used as a tack/feed shed. It would sit for 12 hours and then get fed - it never occurred to me to drain the water - so that was when I started feeding "soupy". On the bag, at that time, it said it needed to "soak" for a minimum of 12 hours. Now you get a bag, it doesn't state that for prep. Then when the temps got really hot again, I would only set it between the morning and nite feeds and feed it at night. When we hit winter, I took the 5 gallon bucket home and kept it by our washer, added extra hot water in the morning before taking it out to the ponies and then took extra hot water in 2 ltr bottles - to add to it as well when we fed. I think it was the "hot" that they really liked!
Since it had never occurred to me to feed it drained/dry, the first time I saw someone do that with their full size horses, I went into shock! I couldn't believe her horses would eat it that way (truly had no idea if mine would either, LOL. Later experiments showed me that mine would more often turn their noses up at it if not fed soupy). We did have one Arabian mare, that at different times of the year got A LOT of beet pulp (w/ molasses) and those were the times she held her weight well and looked her best. If not fed beet pulp or the crazy large amounts not fed, she lost a lot of weight - while staying fit since she was ridden a lot.
Now, after learning more about fermentation, I wonder if the white scum on the beet pulp was from that (& OK to feed) and then when it DID go too much longer, the green fuzzy was mold (& definitely smelled BAD). Either way, when I saw that - ours also went into our burn pile, into a compost pile or now out to the chickens' coops/runs (if they don't eat parts of it, they spread it into the deep litter and like everything else it composts down into lovely, usable compost).
I haven't fed beet pulp in the last few years - these are the years we've had weight problems (too light/way underweight) and I wonder if that is part of it? The most weight loss has been since moving here - while having MUCH MORE fenced pasture - the grass is not the same in any way, shape or form. The hay has been different and while I've fed thru the whole summer since there's been not enough grass to compliment the hay feeding, I've only fed 1x daily due to work schedules... Lots to think about.