mixing my own food

Question
Hi my name is Danielle and i have recently brought a just turned 4yr old thoroughbred who had raced once and snapped a tendon she then got chucked out for six months for the tendon to heal and thats when i bought her she is very unbalanced and has no muscle she also is very much baby more so than a 3yr old(she looks like a slow starter) i would like to mix my own food as our variety is extremely limited and wanted to find out what i should feed her and in what quantaties she wont be doing and strenuous work for this year except walking on the road to start strenghtening the tendon i would much appreciate your response as i need to buy in food asap and would love your advice kind regards Dani

Answer
Dear Danielle,

Congratulation's on your new horse.  If you will only be doing walking work for the next year then your horse does not require anything more than hay.  She doesn't have any muscle because she has not been working, the muscle will come from work.  Feed her as much good clean grass hay as she can eat.  

What she will need is a good supplement to provide her with all her mineral needs and so you might want to feed her something in a bucket so that she can get the supplement.  I would feed her soaked sugarbeet pulp 1 or 2 lbs dry weight (then add water to soak, 1 part sugar beet pulp 2 parts water) and 1 lb of alfalfa pellets.  There are several good grass hay balancing supplements out there, Progressive nutrition (proadvantage grass formula), ADM nutrition (Stay strong and grow strong), Select the best (Select II), are the better ones I know and should be fed as per the feeding instructions on the bag.  She should also have access to white salt, iodized is fine and get 4-8oz a day of ground stabilized flax.  I like omega horse shine which you can get from smartpak or any of the flax products from www.horsetech.com who have free shipping.  I would also add 1000IU of vitamin E preferably in a liquid form.  

Once your horse is up to light work 3 to 5 days a week with 20+ minutes of trotting or if maintaining condition becomes an issue at any time then you could look at feeding grains etc.  You can also increase the sugar beet quite substantially  which has the energy content of oats but is digested differently and is less likely to make horses silly.  Oats though can be a good feed for some horses and when you get to doing harder work rolled oats may be a good choice for your horse.

Let me know if you have any questions and I'm always happy to answer questions by phone if you want to make an appointment just visit my website www.equilibrateequine.com and go to services.

Best regards,

Clair Thunes, PhD.
Independent Equine Nutritionist,
Equilibrate Equine Consulting,
clair@equilibrateequine.com
www.equilibrateequine.com