My feed recommendations

5.5.21 - Dear Carol, We have followed your advice on the feeding of our Irish Draft Frank with the Equivita and the Agrobs' chaff and Weisenflakes. What a difference to him, his skin is amazing and he gleams with health! The vet says he is so pleased with him. My very kindest regards and sincere thanks, Lynn C.

14.6.20 Just changed my boys onto your recommended feeds, so far huge improvements in all departments including a traditional who for the first time has no mallanders behind his knee. And an itchy coat is now comfortable and no flaky skin 🌟 they love the food and I’m confident that everything they are eating is natural, no fillers or nasties in it 🌟 Thank you Carol x Lynn G

Reminder - a horse is nothing more - and nothing less - than a hindgut fibre-fermenter and should only ever eat multi-species, stemmy (not leaf blade), grass forage for the cellulose fibre.

Why? Well, apart from this being how the equine gut has evolved over millenia (in other words, grass is what they're designed to eat), it's all about one magic word - prebiotics.

This is where it's at - prebiotics. Not pro-biotics - pre-biotics. If you check on Wiki, you'll see the definition of prebiotics being "compounds in food that induce the growth or activity of beneficial microorganisms. The most common example is in the gastrointestinal tract, where prebiotics can alter the composition of organisms in the gut microbiome." So they're really really important, because it's pre-biotics - those specialised fibres in those grass stems, which feed the friendly gut microbes to keep their colonies growing so they can do their vital job - producing a plentiful production of beneficial metabolites, aka postbiotics - those hindgut fermentation by-products necessary for the body’s metabolism, which guarantee nutritional, metabolic, and immune health benefits.

Now to why multi grass species, and it's for multi prebiotic variety! Different grasses have different prebiotics, and those hindgut fibre-fermenting microbes need a varied buffet of different prebiotics to feed on. Look at it from a human perspective - would you want to eat just dandelion leaves all day? No way! You'd want to start your day with a serving of porridge oats with chopped banana, a sprinkle of flaxseeds and wheat bran. Come lunch, a bowl of pasta with garlic and onions in the sauce and maybe a side of asparagus. Best of all a mug of hot chocolate before bed (for the cacao - another amazing prebiotic) - easy on the sugar tho. That's not to say a side salad somewhere in your day with dandelion greens and a bit of sliced chicory wouldn't be a bad thing though.

Same for our horses. If they ate just timothy hay all day ... er, boring! Not just in taste but their hindgut microbes would agree as well. Prebiotic variety is key as they each have their own special benefits, so dump the mono-species hay and always head for meadow 😉.

We've got this all covered in more detail in a Blog post - Prebiotic foods for postbiotic abundance, aka, by feeding the gut right, we'll get the best out of it.

So, lets get to it - how do I feed my own horses?

There is no feed-brand finer, in my humble opinion, than the Agrobs Pre-Alpin range. All-natural, organically grown, and produced from grass meadows with over 50 diverse grasses for wonderful prebiotic variety.

That said, Agrobs are tricky to get from feed merchants so I get it online via EquiSupermarket - https://www.equisupermarket.co.uk/c/nutrition/horse-feed. Hopefully this link will take you to the alphabetical listing of all their Agrobs' stock, btu if not make sure you select the 'Order: By Name' option in the drop-down box just above the feeds. They usually deliver within 2-3 days but can sometimes take longer so allow extra time.

Updated 2022. We very sadly lost our Cookie in October after 16 wonderful years with her - her Cushings finally got the better of her so we're now a retired herd of 3, which still feeds weird considering two winters ago we were a herd of 6, with Billy, a friend's horse who we were rehabbing following surgery, and our Pops who we rehomed because once we'd got her healthy again she soon told us she was boredboredbored with us old things!

So here we are now, with our two IR metabolics, Murphy and MacAttack, now 29 and 23 respectively, and Carmen (our TB) now 17, but she's always been a retired non-ridden (born with a twisted left pastern and hoof).

Losing Cookie kind of made me reassess everything. Their feedbowl carrier had always been the Agrobs' Leitchgenus chaff (nicknamed 'Fatties Chaff') and WeisenFlakes. Then a couple of winters' ago, Carms started dropping a bit of condition, so during winter I upgraded her WeisenFlakes to the Agrobs Myo-Protein Flakes for the higher protein content - see our Blog Extra Autumn/Winter Protein for our Poor Doers.

We've ticked along nicely with this same feedbowl carrier for years, but when we lost Cookie it suddenly hit home to me that we were now all older and retired together, plus a recent dental had shown Murf had lost a tooth, so I took stock and reassessed, being mindful of dentition needs for Murf who needed a shorter fibre length nearer to where a horse naturally grinds down their forage to, to save his ancient teeth having to do the hard work.

So, as at Winter 2022 their feedbowl carrier is now the Agrobs MyoProtein Flakes for a protein boost, then come Spring I'll swap the MyoProtein back to the PreAlpin Senior chaff. Come spring, Mac will go back onto the Leitchgenus through the summer as he's our metabolic KPU candidate.

My routine

After the usual greeting (Mac mugging me for food or trying to bite me while the other two ignore me), I head to the feedroom and dish up the Agrobs into each feedbowl. In goes the soak water (hot water during winter which I take with me in a huge thermso, which they love) and the brief soak begins, during which I head off to divvy up their hay for the day, then it's back to finish off with the essential nutrients and herbal therapeutics.

Non-negotiables ...

• Minerals - they permanently have hay in their diet so during the grass growth seasons they get our EquiVita mineral balancer with added linseed (see next pointer). During winter we switch to our VitaComplete which includes the daily 100g RDA of micronised linseed plus 10g salt.
• Linseed (micronised) for the Omega-3 EFA. During summer they still get adlib hay so they get a pro-rata 50g linseed to make up for the EFA deficiency in their hay. (All explained properly in our Linseed page).
• Salt - during summer and especially if it's a hot humid day they get extra salt.

Herbal therapeutics ...

• During spring/summer/autumn, Murf and Mac religiously get our MetaTonic with our DuoBute (as a preventative gentle anti-inflammatory). They also both get Alcar, Murf to help his mobility and Mac for leptin resistance.
• Mac also gets our LKLCARE for his sweet itch, which is now significantly improved since managing him as a KPU candidate since Nov'21, which has done wonders to reset his detoxification function and significantly downgrade his sweet itch. He's now in a much better place - apart from being a lot nicer to be around (since we sorted his gut out) his winter coat now looks amazing, thick and shiny compared to previously thin and scurfy. We now noticeably have much less rubbing throughout the year - usually I have to replace his rug at least once during the season because he can't resist a bum tree-rub which eventually rips the tail flap off. Astonishingly though, he lasted the whole 2022 season with his 2021 rug, even though he'll still be getting a new one for 2023, just because ... 😉.
• Now to Carms and she gets our JSTTonic with our DuoBute and Alcar to support her mobility, as her twisted hoof makes her officially 2/10 lame (although she'd beg to differ 😉).
• And Cookie used to get our CushTonic Mk.I with Tyrosine all year round.

The extras ...

Just my own personal choice:

• Spirulina for its' excellent gut mycotoxin binding/deacidifying properties - I feed it every couple of months or so for 2-weeks-ish.
• Every spring/autumn at coat change time, they all get a 1-month course of our  LKLCARE to give liver/kidneys/lymphatics a tonic.
• They also get our WildFed and WildVits every now and then, simply to add a bit of prebiotic and nutrient diversity into their diet. TopTip - WildVits has superpowers - it literally stops them all in their tracks from mugging each others' feedbowls. 😉

So there we have it. With adlib meadow hay all year round and permanent access to moorland grass, our base feed carrier regime is:

• Agrobs ProAlpin Senior (chaff) as their grass-forage fibre feedbowl carrier, with metabolic Mac switching over to the Leitchgenus during summer.
• For our two seniors, Murf and Carms, they switch to the Agrobs' MyoProtein Flakes during winter.
• During summer we balance with our EquiVita forage-balanced minerals, extra salt and 50g micronised Linseed.
• Winter, or as soon as the grass stops growing, we switch to our VitaComplete.

TaDah!