New duds for the boys

Saga and Red's new turnout sheets came in this week. They fit pretty well, and I like the cut, which is pretty much exactly like the Rambo cut.

Red looks pretty cute in his new navy and red sheet. All it needs is a big white star and he could be the Texas flag! (KIDDING!)

I am not as excited about Saga's teal with "lemon" trim outfit. (The trim is really more of a chartreuse. Ick.) I could have gotten it in java with brick trim, but I would have had to wait for another month for it to come in. Whatever, he'll survive in this.

Remember when blankets came in hunter with navy, maroon with gray trim, or navy with gray trim, and that was it? So many choices nowadays...

We need all the help we can get

Saga tends to be very helpful when we're working out in the pasture. He likes to supervise.

Last weekend, he helped us repair a hole in the roof of the shed (we had to replace 2 panels).

Be sure to get that roof panel on straight... you need to move it a little to the left!

And he made sure we correctly fixed a couple of pieces of loose trim on the shed door.

Are you making sure that loose metal trim is well attached? We wouldn't want any sharp bits sticking out!

Saga didn't get to supervise on this project since it was inside the feed shed. We put up a quick blanket rack with a 2x4 and some blocks of wood - not pretty, but definitely functional!

OooooAlfalfa!

Red loves alfalfa, probably more than Saga does. Of course, he only gets a handful or two of alfalfa per day, while Saga gets an entire flake morning and night.

I keep my alfalfa in hay bags, mostly because it makes a mess whenever you pull off a flake. When I'm done with the bale, Red gets the leftovers.

Today, I was moving two new bales of alfalfa to the back shed, and Red decided he didn't want to wait till the bag was empty to get his share.

Ooooh! Could it be... a fresh bag of alfalfa?!?!

Mine! Mine! All mine!

Naturally, Red is starving. Just ask him about it - he'll probably forget to mention the entire pound of carrots that MC fed him when she came out to ride him today...

Feeding the boys: Part V

DISCLAIMER: I am not a vet or an equine nutritionist. This information is purely based on research I have done myself. Please do not mistake my research for actual advice on what to feed your horse. I'm just sharing my experiences so that other horse owners can have the information.

This is the fifth in a series on how I'm determining what to feed my two horses. For Part IV, visit here.

In the last installment, we figured out how much hay and concentrates, in pounds, I was actually feeding the boys. Here's the recap:

• Saga was getting 15 lbs of forage and 9 lbs of concentrates (Purina Ultium), or a total of 24 lbs per day. That's within the range of 16.5 and 27.5 lbs that he's supposed to get, but it's an awful lot of concentrates. Plus, he still looked ribby, and his feet seemed to be increasingly sore on the Ultium.
• Red was getting 15 lbs of forage and perhaps 1/2 lb of concentrates (Nutrena Lite Balance) daily. So he's well within the 13.5 to 22.5 lb range that we calculated for him, if a little on the low end. Red was in good weight, but he tied up after our last hunt. Is he selenium and/or vitamin E deficient, like the vet suggested?

Now it's time to get down-and-dirty with the math regarding how much vitamins and minerals the boys were actually getting, and how much they are supposed to be getting. Since there are a lot of nutrients in feed (my current count is 34), I'm going to concentrate on calculating some key values as examples.

NSCs
Let's start with calculating non-structured carbohydrates, or NSCs. This is the combination of sugars and starches in a feed. Sugars, and therefore NSCs, are known triggers for laminitis -which is why you're not supposed to let horses graze on sugar-rich spring grasses. "Metabolic" horses, i.e. those with Cushings, are recommended to have no more than 12% NSCs in their diets (again, your mileage may vary depending on your source). Some non-horses appear to be more susceptible to increased amounts of sugars in their diet - for example, some barefoot horses can become "footy" within hours or days of having additional NSCs in their diets. Since Saga has been off-and-on footy, I was curious if the amount of NSCs in his diet might be causing some issues. However, I wasn't sure how much he was getting.

To calculate the total NSCs in your horse's diet, you need to add up all the NSC values for all the different concentrates and forages he's getting. Some feed companies post the NSC value of their feed right on their web site. Others you have to dig for online - and sometimes the numbers you find aren't consistent. If it's not on your feed bag label or on the company's web site, call the company and ask.

• The reported NSC value for Purina Ultium is 16% (reference: COTH forum)
• The average NSC value for Bermuda grass (coastal) hay is 13.2% (reference: equi-analytical). Ideally, I'd have my hay tested, but since I have not yet done so, we'll go with the average value.

To calculate the total NSCs your horse is getting, you first need to calculate how many pounds of NSCs your horse is getting for each feed source. Since NSCs are reported as percentages, to calculate pounds, you need to multiply the pounds of feed by the percentage of NSCs. Then you add the pounds of NSCs together and divide by the total amount of feed (in lbs) they're getting. Here are the calculations for Saga:

• (9 lbs of Ultium) x (.16) = 1.44 lbs NSCs from Ultium


• (15 lbs of Bermuda hay) x (.132) = 1.98 lbs NSCs from Bermuda hay
  


• (1.44 lbs + 1.98 lbs) / 24 lbs = 14.25% total NSCs

So, Saga wasn't getting huge amounts of NSCs, but certainly there's room for improvement. In addition, I read the label on the Ultium bag carefully, and for a horse in moderate work (remember, Saga is in light work), he should be getting about 6.5 lbs of grain per day. I was over-feeding by 2.5 lbs per day, and he was still ribby. Eeek! I needed to cut back on the Ultium and change something else.

Selenium
For Red, my main concern was that he might be Selenium and/or Vitamin E deficient, causing him to tie up. So, I needed to calculate the amount of these nutrients in his diet. Here are the calculations for Red:

• Nutrena Lite Balance has 1 ppm (that's 1 part per million) of Selenium per pound of feed (reference: Nutrena web site).
  
• Bermuda hay has no Selenium (reference: equi-analytical).
  

Since Red was getting approximately 1/2 lb of Lite Balance per day, that means he was getting .5 ppm of selenium per day.

Now the question is, how much Selenium does Red actually need? According to the book "Equine Nutrition and Feeding" by David Frape, a horse in light work needs 0.002 mg/kg BW/day. Let's decipher what this means:

• milligrams (mg) = parts per million (ppm). So, 1 mg = 1 ppm
• kg/BW/day is "kilograms of body weight per day". This means you need to convert the number of pounds your horse weighs to kilos. In Red's case, he weighs about 900 lbs, and 1 lb = .454 kg, so Red weighs 408.24 kg. I'll round up to 410 for easier math.

Now, we need to determine how much Selenium he needs based on his body weight by multiplying the number of mg by his body weight in kg:

• 0.002 mg x 410 kg = 0.82 mg/selenium/day

We've already figured out that he's getting .5 mg (remember, ppm = mg, so .5 ppm = .5 mg) per day from his feed, so he's .32 mg/day short. That's nearly a third less Selenium than he needs!

Vitamin E
Now, let's do the same calculation for Vitamin E, since Vitamin E deficiency is another cause of tying up.

• Nutrena Lite Balance has 250 IU/lb of Vitamin E per pound of feed (reference: Nutrena web site).
  
• According to EquineAnalytical, Bermuda hay has no Vitamin E.
  

At 1/2 lb of Lite Balance per day, Red was getting 125 IU of Vitamin E per day.

How much Vitamin E should he be getting per day? Equine Nutrition and Feeding says 1.6 mg/kg BW/day. Doing the math, we get:

• 410 kg x 1.6 mg = 656 mg Vitamin E per day

But wait, our units are off again! We need to convert IU to mg.

IU are "international units," or the measure of effect of a substance (reference: Wikipedia [yeah, Wikipedia, I know. Shoot me later.]) . The conversion factor for IU to mg is different for each type of vitamin. For Vitamin E, you divide the number of IU by 1.10* to get the number of mg. So Red was getting:

• (125 IU/day) / 1.10 = 113.6 mg/day

YIKES! He's supposed to be getting 656 mg/day, so he's WAY low!

Since Red was low on both Vitamin E and Selenium, the vet's recommendation to add a supplement to his feed was probably a good one. If only I'd done the math beforehand, I'd have known this was a problem!

Feeding recommendations
One thing I realized as I started to read feed tags is that I was not feeding either concentrate within the recommended feeding levels. Nutrena recommends feeding Lite Balance at a rate of 0.25 to 0.5 lb (kg) per 100 lb. body weight (reference: Nutrena). If I had been feeding Red in the recommended quantities (2.25 to 5 lbs per day for a 900 lb horse), he would have had no problem getting the amount of Vitamin E and Selenium he needed.

HOWEVER, it's important to note that even when you feed in the recommended doses, your horse may be getting too much or not enough of something. For example, Saga needs 1 ppm of selenium/day (0.002 mg x 500 kg). If he had gotten the recommended 6.5 lbs of Ultium per day, he would have gotten 3.25 ppm of Selenium/day (Ultium has 0.5 ppm MINIMUM per pound of feed). I was feeding 9 lbs of Ultium per day, which is 4.5 ppm/day. Either dose is way too much! In fact, a little research on selenium toxicity in horses shows that the maximum a horse should ingest per day is 3 mg, and more than 5 mg/day can result in a horse that is "lame, loses weight easily and has a dull coat." HOLY CRAP! Saga was definitely footy on the Ultium, and he wasn't gaining weight. Maybe this was due to getting too much Selenium instead of getting too much NSCs? Since I didn't do a blood test, I'll never know, and he's no longer getting Ultium. Even so, it's a scary thought.

Now let me be clear - I am not disparaging either feed. It is my own fault for not reading the feed labels and following them. It is my own fault for not doing the math and understanding the possible consequences of feeding too much or too little to my horses. This is why being educated about feeds is so very important.

Next steps
I realize that my over-analytical self has probably gone overboard on all the math for feeds, and we only calculated a few key nutrients for our horses! There are lots of other things to looks at - fat, protein, calcium, phosphorous, iron, copper, manganese... and the list goes on. Since this post has already gotten so long, I'll wait till next time to discuss other nutrients I was concerned about, including protein, fat, calcium, and phosphorous. I'll also be posting the list of nutrients that I've accumulated along with the recommended doses for each nutrient from several different sources. That way you can do your own calculations for all these details.

And then... I have to figure out what to feed the boys!

* Ok, kidding, it's not that simple. It depends on if it's natural Vitamin E or synthetic, and what type of Vitamin E it is. See this page for more info. The ingredient list for Lite Balance says "Vitamin E supplement," so I don't know what kind of Vitamin E it is, but I guessed that it was d-alpha-Tocopherol. If someone else has better information, please let me know.

A bit of grooming assistance

This weekend, MC was out to ride Reddums. She also kindly spent some time grooming Saga, since I was working on the house and couldn't go for a ride.

First, she groomed him and gave him a good vacuuming.

Clearly, Saga hates this.

Then, she washed and conditioned his tail, combed it out, braided it, and put it in a tail bag. We're trying to do something to salvage his rather pathetic tail, and this was her suggestion. We'll see how it looks in a couple of months!

It's really wonderful to have someone you trust come out and help look after the boys. Thanks, MC, for all the help!

Feeding the boys, Part IV

This is the fourth in a series on how I'm determining what to feed my two horses. For Part III, visit here.

In the last installment, we'd figured how how much feed, in pounds, the boys were supposed to get. Here's the quick recap:

• Saga should get between 16.5 and 27.5 lbs of feed per day, with no more than 11 lbs of concentrates.
• Red should get between 13.5 and 22.5 lbs of feed per day, with no more than 9 lbs of concentrates.

The next step is to figure out how much the boys were actually getting. Since I didn't have a scale for the feed room, and my kitchen scale was too small (only goes up to 2 lbs), I dragged our bathroom scale out to the feed room. I weighed myself, then picked up whatever I was weighing, and weighed myself again. Here's what I figured out:

• A scoop of Purina Ultium weighs about 3 lbs.
• A scoop of Triple Crown Light or Nutrena Lite Balance weighs about 2 lbs.
• A decent-sized flake of Bermuda grass hay weighs about 3 lbs. However, small flakes can weigh as little as 1.5 lbs.
• A decent-sized flake of alfalfa weighs about 5 lbs. Alfalfa weight did vary widely - I had one densely-packed bale and one that was much less dense. You need to be careful if you're feeding by volume instead of weight.

So, at the time, Saga was getting:

• 1 flake Bermuda 2x daily, plus 3 flakes at bedtime (15 lbs Bermuda)
• 1.5 scoops of Ultium 2x daily (9 lbs concentrates)
• 2 scoops BOSS 2x daily (maybe 0.2 lbs)
  
• Daily Strongid wormer (negligible weight)
  
• 24/7 pasturage (but it's quite poor as we haven't had any rain)

Based on our math above, Saga was getting 15 lbs of forage and 9 lbs of concentrates, or a total of 24 lbs per day. That's well within the range of 16.5 and 27.5 lbs that he's supposed to get, but it's an awful lot of concentrates. Plus, he still looked ribby, and his feet seemed to be increasingly sore on the Ultium. What's a horse to do?

Red was getting:

• 1 flake of Bermuda 2x daily, plus 3 flakes at bedtime (15 lbs Bermuda)
• 1 cup of Nutrena Lite Balance 2x daily
• Daily Strongid wormer
  
• 24/7 pasturage (but it's quite poor as we haven't had any rain)

Based on this math, Red was getting 15 lbs of forage and perhaps 1/2 lb of concentrates daily. So he's well within the 13.5 to 22.5 lb range that we calculated for him, if a little on the low end. Red was in good weight, but he tied up. Possible mineral deficiency?

So, now we know exactly how much feed the boys were getting. How much is your horse getting? If you haven't already gone and weighted your feed and hay, you should do it now. In the next installment, we'll look a feed tags and do some math on vitamins and minerals. Grab your calculators!

My fantasy barn

Someday - hopefully sooner rather than later - we'll get around to building our barn. And while I wish I could have one of those beautiful places with 14x14 stalls, varnished wood doors, and wrought iron bars, that's really not how I keep the boys. Let's face it - what's best for horses is for them to be out 24/7, and if that's not possible, then at least they should get as much movement as possible. Keeping them bundled up in stalls isn't good for them, and it's sure a pain for me when it comes to mucking! Sure, I need a place so I can feed them separately and/or a way to keep them in if someone gets hurt, but otherwise, they really just need a place to get out of the weather in the winter and out of the sun and bugs in the summer.

So, I will end up with a glorified run-in shed with a tack room, hay storage, and a nice spot for grooming. But within that area... muahahaha.... I can go hog wild! I'm talking about things like a wood-paneled tackroom, a rubber-brick grooming pad, and... well, a horsey vacuum cleaner.

I know, you think I'm crazy for wanting a horsey vacuum. But the barn I boarded Cash at when we lived up in New York, Larkin' Hill Farm, had one and OMG it was awesome! You'd think the horses would be afraid of the noise, but after a brief introduction to Mr. Vacuum, all of them chilled right out. And most of them loved being groomed with it! Maybe it was like a massage, I don't know, but they would make the silliest faces when you ran the vacuum over them - most of them would really get into it.

And nothing, but nothing, makes winter grooming a fuzzy, unclipped horse easier. I don't care how much you hot towel, curry, or brush, there is no way to groom out the dirt that's deep down in the coat. With a vacuum, it's so easy it should be illegal.

At the encouragement of a "friend*" who was probably tired of listening to me whine about how hard it is to groom fuzzy horses, I checked out the local Craigslist ads for horse vacuums. I mean, really, what are the chances of someone listing a horse vacuum for sale, just when I decide to go shopping for one? Because really, I do not need a horse vacuum. I need to ride more. I need to finish the ceiling in the bathroom. But, because the stars were in alignment (or something), there it was on Craigslist - a nice, compact, Rapid-Groom vacuum for $75! SCORE!

So, I have the vacuum. I have dirty horses. Well, OK, now I have Very Clean Well-Vacuumed Horses - at least, until they roll. Now, all I need is the rest of the barn to put the vacuum in, and I'll be all set.

I know, I know. One step at a time. :)

* Thaaaanks, MC. Really.