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Feed Again - senior feed

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Chanda:
My old man is getting picky again, it's just him, he gets picky in winter, this year it was earlier than usual.  Usually, adding alfalfa pellets to his senior is enough to get him cleaning up his dish again, but not so much this time.   We are so cold, that soaked feed freezes before it can be finished off, so I am putting off soaking his feed for as long as possible.  He doesn't eat much baled hay.   I tried several combinations of hay cubes and pellets this year, nothing was  a hit for him.   He had his teeth floated this summer, he still has all his teeth, but they are old man teeth.
I have limited selection local, so he's been eating Equis senior, the only senior the local store carries (this store is a CoOp, so decent prices and chance for a yearly dividend check, so like to buy what I can there). It's a regional brand.   The vet in one town carries Nutrena safe choice senior, and the vet in another town carries Purina (last time I checked, product I looked at was out of date); I'm not a huge fan of either.  And, there is a farm/ranch store 6 hours away that delivers monthly; so I just ordered LMF Low Carb senior from them to try, my order arrived today.  The LMF Low Carb is almost double the price of the Equis at the CoOp (and it's $7 more per bag than the LMF regular senior).  Good thing Che` is a tiny stallion and doesn't eat that much (around a bag a month or a little more - I'll have to do the math on the new feed to see how much is recommended for his size).   I carried one bag into his stall, his feed container is behind a half-wall in the back of his stall; he followed me in, so I gave him a little handful, and he dove right in, so it looks promising as an option for him.   I'll take a week to 10 days to switch him over from the old senior to the new senior, and we'll see how he does on it.
Picture of the two senior feeds together.

So, what's your favorite senior?   Or what do you mix up for your senior horses that eat little hay for one reason or another?

dcwolcott:
Well, I used the Purina products, and especially liked the Senior Feed for those of mine missing teeth or with the "old man" teeth, but I have a local Purina store with great turnover, so no stale food.

Rocklone:
I feed my 18yo hunter a mix called 16+ by dodsen an horrel:

Oatfeed, Barley, Alfalfa, Wheatfeed, Full Fat Soya, Distiller's Wheat Grains, Extracted Sunflower, Cane Molasses, Maize, Glucose Syrup, Nutritionally Improved Straw, Vegetable Oil, Peas, Calcium Carbonate, Mint, Dried Carrots, Salt, Unmolassed Sugar Beet, Vitamin/Trace Mineral Premix, Magnesium Oxide, Wheat, Garlic Granules, Dicalcium Phosphate, Glucosamine (0.2%), Prairie Meal, L-Lysine, Marjoram, Dandelion Leaves, Methyl Sulphonyl Methane - MSM (0.05%), Nettle Leaves, Blackcurrant, Kale, Spinach, Beetroot, Rosemary, Rosehip, Pomegranate (0.03%)

He gets that with a speedibeet and a cup of micronised linseed which help throw the weight on him.


There is a 31yo horse at my yard who has 5 "meals" a day all soaked. I think one is a grass nut, one is this 16+, one is a fibrebeet, one is a grass chaff that when soaked makes it like a chopped grass so easy to eat, and the other is his haylage all cut up into bite sizes. Takes them about an hour to prepare his meal before feeding, then he gets to decide which/when to eat as they are all in different buckets. The horse looks amazing for a 31yo exrace horse, and can still be ridden with great liveliness!

Carly Rae:
Willow is 18 and I feed her a mix of 2 laminitis safe feeds, Maxi Soy, which has protein and Easi Sport which gives her energy. I add a vitamin and mineral supplement, along with Rhodes grass hay which the vet said is low sugar. I also give her a bit of time out on the grass with a grazing muzzle. I did start her off with plain maxi soy which she didn't enjoy much, adding the easi sport is a bit more appealing to her.  :) Willow also has problems with her teeth, the dentist said it may limit her life by 5 years, as she will begin to find it harder to eat, although these feeds are recommended for older horses with teeth issues as well  :)

dcwolcott:
Carly,

Don't forget that as she ages, you can always take a good feed and make it easy to eat by making more of a "slop" of it.  I had 2 oldsters who came to me in their retirement years, and both had very few teeth.  But I took a Senior feed and alfalfa cubes and soaked them in warm water.  They both lived into their late 20's.  It was so funny listening to them "slurp" their feed.   :D   But, it got them through and they lived longer than I expected by just making things easier to eat.

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