After discussing horse feed in August with charming Michigan veterinarians on their way to and from a week-long Tennessee trail ride, I started reading feed bag labels. 

The last two winters had followed terrible summer droughts.  Going into winter without the fat built up over summer grazing, made it hard to keep the horses’ weight up to ensure they stay warm and healthy during the toughest part of the year.  I fed more grain than I’ve ever fed, but the horses looked worse and worse as winter progressed.  Despite having all the hay they could eat as well as supplemental grain, they didn’t recover fully until spring grass finally grew.

Our Michigan friends said that feed manufacturers, in their efforts to cut costs, are using things like sawdust and ground up paper as “roughage.”   Like for human products, ingredients must be listed on labels with largest quantities first.  Also, “real” products are listed with their real names.  It’s like the difference between buying cheese and “a cheese food” like those rubbery no-name cellophane wrapped slices.

Evidently most horse owners, like me, simply assume products marketed as horse feed are legitimate and healthy for their animals.  Most big companies that manufacture animal feed also make other things.  I suspect they’re putting real grains into other products and putting left-overs (with their tidbits of “left-over” nutrition) in horse feed.  This may have happened when corn and other grain prices skyrocketed due to gas prices hitting $4 several years ago.

So, I’ve been reading dozens of horse feed labels in an effort to find real corn and oats. No horse feeds at Tractor Supply listed corn, oats or alfalfa meal as ingredients.  Only one variety of “premium” feed at Orchlein in Lawrenceburg, out of more than a dozen available there (including senior feeds!), listed a whole grain as the first ingredient – followed by “by-products” of everything else. None of the feeds sold at Sam’s stores in the Cincinnati area list a single “real” ingredient.

Bi-County Co-Op in Walton had been shut down by the health department this summer for selling contaminated feed so I didn’t check there.

Purina Horseman’s Edge 12% Sweet Feed lists its ingredients as “grain products, processed grain by-products, molasses products” and a long list of chemicals and supplements.  Sweet Horse Feed marketed under the name Paymaster sold by Acco Feeds of Minneapolis lists “grain products, plant protein products, processed grain byproducts, roughage products, molasses products….”  To my surprise, TizWhiz, a nationally marketed horse feed, also failed to list any real grains. 

Our Michigan friends said they have feed mixed to order, so I found Laughery Valley Ag Co-Op in Dillsboro, IN.  They will mix a minimum of 500 pounds of horse feed at a time and have it ready in a half hour, which is the amount of time it takes me to drive that far. 

While the vets also talked about eliminating sugar from their horses’ diets because it makes them hyper just like kids, I like it to increase palatability for Seven, my old guy, and to make the glucosamine & MSM supplements stick to the feed. If I could cut sugar out of my own diet, I’d feel comfortable doing it for them, but I don’t see that happening!

So, I’m now feeding a mix of REAL rolled corn, whole oats, something they call a “balancer” supplement for horses and liquid molasses. Interestingly enough, it’s about the same price as I was paying at Sams – and much cheaper than the brand name products that cost significantly more.

(Be sure corn you feed horses is “rolled” or “cracked.”  Horses’ digestive systems can not process and get as much food value out of whole corn.  Before farmers had access to feed mills, they simply kept pigs and chickens with their cows and horses.  When the whole corn came out of the grazing animals, the pigs and chickens ate it. Animal Science 101 at Purdue has to come out every once in a while. ) 

While Seven may never regain his previous weight due to his advanced age, Sundance, our “cribbing machine” who is hard to keep weight on, has immediately regained what he’d begun to lose as grass slowed growing in September.

Give it some thought.  Pull the contents tag off your feed bag and make sure you’re feeding real grain, not by-products with little-to-no feed value that the company can’t sell at a bigger profit as something else!