Secret Santa 2017: Evaluating TC's Diet

I was fortunate enough to receive my Secret Santa gift really early this year! The reason being is that L was my Secret Santa and she knew immediately what to get me and I'm having SO MUCH FUN with it.

She and I have been really good friends for years now and even though she moved away from me, we still chat a fair amount. When she was in town for Thanksgiving, we rode together (still need to write about this) and she gave me my present! It was a month's subscription to FeedXL.

She knows I'm both really into data and really into being completely overwhelmed by horse ownership despite having them my whole life. So when she told me about FeedXL, I was super stoked. I had been thinking that I wanted to redo TC's feed for a while, since he's not finishing all his grass hay, and this has been SUPER helpful.

First page

Basically what you do is you put in all your feed information and it tells you where your horse's deficits are. I was super stoked because not only would it tell me how his feed is now, but I could put in a bunch of other feeds and experiment with what is the best feed.

TC's diet (up until tomorrow) is as follows:

AM:
1 flake grass hay (5.5lbs or so)
1 flake alfalfa hay (6lbs or so)

PM:
2 flakes grass hay (11.5lbs or so)
1 flake alfalfa hay (6lbs or so)

Grain:
3lbs LMF Gentle Balance
1g Animed Muscle Up
5g Animed Glucosamine 5000
10g Animed MSM
3g Animed Anipsyll
15 pills (6,000 IUs) Vitamin E


I had let his Omega Horseshine run out a month or two ago because I didn't see enough of a difference and then I added the Anipsyll because he eats on dirt a lot of the year (which is now run out and I'm not going to feed it over the winter since he doesn't eat on dirt in the winter). I'm also relatively cheap so the Animed supplements are great. They're a very no-frills company. I hate spending money on stuff my horse just pees out and I do worry that he just pees out all those supplements!

Final diet- his sodium is still low because he licks his salt
lick and I dunno how much he's really getting, I will be adding
more salt to his diet though

The problem coming into winter was that TC wasn't finishing his grass hay, so I wanted to remove a flake of hay and add some grain to make up some of the calories. Now that I had more room in my tack room, I could store more grain so this was actually an option!

I wasn't sure what to take out though, so I ran the analysis.

The first analysis came back that TC was being fed WAY too much protein, and not enough iodine or sodium. I was also feeding more Vitamin E than he needed, so he was probably just peeing it out. Knowing that he needed less protein, I opted to pull a flake of alfalfa and ran it again.

Final diet continued

Now TC was getting too little energy for his weight/workload and he was also missing copper and selenium in addition to the iodine and sodium. 

Knowing that I didn't want to spend a lot, I decided to replace some of the grass hay with grass pellets (cheaper than feeding an extra flake of hay, and less wasteful hopefully), which helped with the energy but not anything else. I also added a pound of equine senior because I had wanted to get something a little sweet for clicker training and that seemed to be a good idea- either add it to his grain or use it for clicker training each day.

That took care of everything except the iodine if I'm remembering correctly, so I asked the supplement wizard what to do. It listed a TON of supplements but the one that I noticed was California Trace, a cheap supplement that has a bunch of stuff that California soil doesn't have in it. This one stood out because just the other day my mom asked me if I wanted a bunch of it and I said I didn't know. So now I know!

New diet! No salt in there yet though oops

With TC's new diet, he now has everything balanced and I'm not out a ton of money I don't think.  Here's the new diet:


AM:
1 flake grass hay (5.5lbs or so)
1 flake alfalfa hay (6lbs or so)

PM:
2 flakes grass hay (11.5lbs or so)

Grain:
3lbs LMF Gentle Balance
3lbs Grass Pellets
1lb Equine Senior
1oz California Trace
1g Animed Muscle Up
5g Animed Glucosamine 5000
10g Animed MSM
12 pills (4,800 IUs) Vitamin E (going to to slowly let these run out)
1g Salt

So the changes are: add grass pellets, equine senior, california trace, and salt; take out Anispyll (becuase I ran out anyway and he's now eating on his mats for a while due to winter), vitamin E (slowly since I have a lot of it), and the extra alfalfa flake.

Now my goal is to work on this stuff (without being shamed
into spending too much money lol)

I'm really excited to see how this works! I need to keep an eye on his weight because it does get cold here (in the 30s overnight now) and he doesn't wear a blanket (he isn't clipped), but I figured I'd try this for December and see if he's okay. If that's not the case, he'll get some more food.

So major thanks to L for the most amazing Secret Santa gift! I had no idea I could obsess over my horse's diet to another level but it was so fun and didn't tell me I was accidentally depriving my horse of any necessary food, phew.

Now off to the store to get him some equine senior and grass pellets!