Reading a feed tag

From fhotd member libertyvalleystables
http://fhotd64476.yuku.com/topic/15304

**This post was also a plug for Buckeye Nutrition.

My wife and I own a feed distributorship and one of the things we run into is people being uneducated in how to actually read a feed tag so I thought i would post to help people understand what they need to take a gander at. Also, when you get to the end or are reading this, do not feel that you have been a bad horse owner or have been harming your horse. I am sure that most if not all of you really care what you put into your horse and not being educated on it is not totally your fault.

While you read this, it would be great if you can have one of your feed tags available to reference when i go through certain parts.

Most people that we run into purchase their feed by two factors, the first being cost and the second being protein. ( I am not saying everyone so please refrain from posting "i dont' do that, i know how to feed" not grouping everyone, just trying to be informative )

I am going to start with protein. Ask yourself, have you ever walked into a feed store and asked for a 12% feed. I know my dad did and that was how I was raised and it is very, very common. When you look at a feed tag that protein is first on the list and is normally your highest % for a reason. Feed companies know that the uneducated public only care about the protein content in the feed so that is their major selling point. Let me be the first to tell you that those percentages are one of your least important items on the tag. What? you might say, yes the percentages are one of the LEAST IMPORTANT items on the tag. The first place your eyes should go is to the ingredients, normally the last part of the tag. This is mostly due to the fact that most of the horse feeds out there are filled with crap and they know most people don't go beyond the percentages at the top.

So now take a look at the ingredients and most of you will see a couple of these if not all of them within the first 6 items:
Grain products, Grain by-products, plant products, plant protein products, plant protein by-products, roughage products, Molasses, Whole Corn, Whole Oats

Now ask your self this, what is that? By law there are 32 different items that can fall into each of the "products" category. ( 32 grain products, 32 by-products, etc ) so really you have no idea what you are getting. The exception is if you live in FL or CA. Those states require that all ingredients are listed out. As I stated earlier, we own a feed store ( I will input name and our plug later ) and the feed we carry has a big presence in FL so some of our reps collected a rivals (P*****) feed tags for 12 months from the same feed store there. In those 12 months the ingredient list for the same feed changed 8 times, 8 TIMES!!! Well you might ask why. The terms I used above are called "collective terms" or "least cost formulation" meaning that when the company is buying the ingredients, what ever is cheapest at the time is what they will purchase. So your horses diet can change monthly and you might not ever have a clue. I feel this is something that needs to be addressed by out government but I digress......

A better type of formulation (our company has done for 30 years and now others are starting to copy) is called locked formulation. This means that all ingredients are listed on the tag. Now just because everything is locked, does not mean that it is all good for your horse. Boot leather is a source of protein and Limestone is a source of calcium but how digest-able are those items, exactly in one end out the other (I will expand on this more later) Now that you are looking at feed tags that are locked formulas, ask your store if you can have one and take it home and google every item that is on that tag. Then you can take a look at what the actual make up of your feed is, and how digest-able you feed truly is (most feeds on the marked are about 55 - 60 percent digest-able, ours are 90 -93 )

Ok, now that we know what is in the feed lets move just above the ingredients or on the back of the tag to the feeding recommendation. Most every tag will for sure give you the generic "feed with good quality hay and fresh water" or something to that effect. We all as horse owners can agree that NATURAL FORAGE AND WATER are the two most important items in our horses diets, ALL GRAIN IS A SUPPLEMENT. They survived many moons before us on what the earth provided, they could do it now but we push them harder than what they can get from grazing, hence grain. Ok, we are past the hay and water thing so on to how much to feed and where they come up with it. Most of your "collective terms" bags will also be very vauge on their feeding recommendation. It will normally be "feed 1/2 to 2 percent of body weight or until you feel their weight is good" or some variation of this. Now lets think about this, I have quarter horses so I will use them as my examples. A normal mature QH is usually from 800 - 1000 lbs. Numerous sources and research has stated that a horse should eat 1.5 to 2 percent of their body weight a day in hay so lets agree that all my calculations from now on is in addition to this amount of hay. If your horse is HYPP or has some immune deficiency as me questions on how to feed them and I can answer them later. OK, 800 - 1000 lbs. I am going to work with 1000 due to the fact it makes the math easier for me. At the low end of the scale ( 1/2% ) you would feed 5lbs a day, at the upper end (2%) you would feed 20 lbs a day. That is a huge difference and most of us know if we fed the 5 lbs our horses would be skinny (not speaking of easy keepers, get into them in a min) and if we fed the 20 lbs we could roll them around our arenas. So what do we do. Most of us will just feed and judge on rib cover or the Henneke Scoring System. Both of these are not bad ways but by doing this are you shorting your horse? Yes you are, feeding recommendations are judged on the vitamins and minerals that a horse needs to sustain necessary body and life function. So if you are feeding 2lbs of a feed that the is recommended to be fed at 12lbs your horse is not meeting its daily intake of those essential vit / min. A good quality feed does not need high amounts fed a day and your horse will still meet its needs. Now the other exception is that those recommendations is to sustain life, not go out and rope, pen, jump etc. If your horse is doing these things it is an athlete, not a pasture ornament so you would need to up the feeding for calories and vit / min for a higher performing horse.

Ok, now i have shown you how to see what your horse is eating, and how much they should get, now back to those pesky percentages. Every feed out there base their percentages on a per lb scale. I will explain. If you have a feed with a protein level of 12% and you feed 10 lbs a day. Take 10 x .12 and your horse is getting 1.2 lbs of protein a day. Here is where the fun starts. What do most people do if they have a hot horse (hot being nervous, jumpy, plenty of non productive enegy) well they look at his grain and say, wow he is hot maybe i will cut his feed back. So now we cut the feed back to 5 lbs a day. take 5 x .12 and you get .6 lbs of protein per day. But their hay and grazing time has not changed at all. Grass hay is normally about 8 -10 percent in protein, and feeding a 1000 lb horse at 1.5% body weight in hay would be 15 lbs. 15 x .10 (hay protein) is 1.5 lbs of protein from hay. So combined we had 1.2 lbs from grain and 1.5 from hay for a total of 2.7 lbs a day. when we reduced the grain we only brought this down to 2.1 lbs a day or less than a 25% decrease and you are now shorting your horse on vit / min. Chances are with that reduction you will also see your horse lose weight because your fat level is probably around 3 - 5 percent ( 10 lbs x 5% is only a half a lb of fat a day) so you feed more grain and get a hot horse again, so what to do?

You purchase a better quality feed!!!! Now I will get on my feed soap box and on to my second point of my title. We are going to compare 2 bags of feed, Bag A and Bag B, and 2 horses Horse EZK and Horse WH ( easy keeper and Working Horse ) Again both bags will be fed with grass hay and water so that will not come into my calculations. Bag A can be any brand and Brand B will be Buckeye Feed (the feed we carry)

HORSE EZ (pasture ornament)-----
Bag A costs $8.50 a bag, it has collective terms, a feeding recommendation of 1/2 to 2 percent and a protein level of 12 %, fat level of 4%, and a fiber level of 8%. We are going to feed this to a 1000 lb hors at 1% or 10 lbs a day. (this would be 3 times 5 lbs a time, i will go into why later)

Bag B Grow-n-Win costs $34 a bag, it is a locked formula that also includes balanced amino acids (lysine, methionine essential to the horses body function and omega 3 and omega 6 fatty acids google them and look them up) feeding recommendation is 1 lb a day, protein level of 32%, fat level of 5% and fiber level of 5%.Grow-n-Win

First lets figure out cost per lb. The easiest way to do this is to take your cost per bag, double it and divide by 100.
Bag A 8.5 x 2 = 17 17 / 100 = .17 per lb
Bag B 34 x 2 = 68 68 / 100 = .68 per lb

Now that we have cost per lb lets get cost per day.
Bag A .17 x 10 lbs = 1.70 day
Bag B .68 x 1 lb = .68 day

Now for the month
Bag A 1.70 x 30 = 51 a month
Bag B .68 x 30 = 20.40 a month

For an EZ keeper to meet the correct lvls you can feed your horse for less than half by purchasing a better quality grain.

Now lets move on to a Working horse ( this would be a horse that is worked couple hours a day 5 - 6 days a week.

Bag A we would need to increase to the 2% level and maybe higher but we will stick with the 2% or 20 lbs on a 1000 lb horse. Now by doing this we run into a couple of factors that i will address after calculations.

Bag B ($22.00 Cadence Ultra) we will change feeds to one tailored to a working horse. Some might say I am not being fair here but i am giving examples and I have met many clients that are feeding the cheapest feed they can and still trying to get a high level of performance out of them. Feeding recommendation will be 6 lbs a day and this will be a 14% protien, 14% Fat, 14% fiber.

Bag A is still .17 a lb
Bag B will now be .44 a lb

Cost per day will be
Bag A .17 x 20 = 3.20
Bag B .44 x 6 = 2.64

Cost per month would be
Bag A 3.20 x 30 = 96
Bag B 2.64 x 30 = 79.20


Again, the cheaper bag is more expensive in the long run. Now the factors that i spoke about the higher feeding level of Bag A bringing up are as follows. Horses stomachs are about the size of a football and hold at max about 5 lbs at a time. Mother nature has installed a rake per say that if they eat more than that in one feeding it spills over into the hind gut. The hind gut is where the good bacteria that help break down and asorb the vit / min / amino acids live. When you throw a high carb /starch /sugar diet straight into the hind guy you kill these bacteria. With those bacteria not up to par, the digestion and absorption ratio goes down and your horse will start to lose weight, muscle def etc. So you see them losing weight and you ad more feed. Well this is just working against what you are trying to do. Unlike cows that have two stomachs horses have just the one and it is a lot more sensitive. If you have a horse like this now, I would get a better quality feed, cut your meal sizes back and feed a probiotic ( plain yogurt from walmart works great, just get a syringe and give 20cc for 14 days just like you were worming)

I have shown you how to read a feed tag, and how a higher quality feed can actually save you money. If the economy has truly taken a toll on you and even buying a higher quality feed is not an option I would not purchase grain at all and use that money on a better quality hay. Have your hay tested and see what the digestible percentage of it is. This is something we do for all our clients and then build the feeding program around the hay as it is the most important.

Please if you have any questions or do not understand anything I have posted here please don't hesitate to post and ask. We do carry Buckeye Feed products and do feel they are the best on the market. You may not have heard of us because we are just one single plant out of Dalton, OH. We are owned by M.A.R.S Horsecare US (yes M & M candies etc the Mars family) We are one of the only companies to have a PHD in Equine Nutrition running our equine department, and Mars also owns Waltham Research Facility (The largest Equine, K9 and Feline facility in the world) Other companies have started copying our bag percentages and coming out with similar products but their ingredient lists are not the same and they only balance down to the first 3 amino acids in the equine chain. This chain is made up of 7 essential amino acids and we balance to all 7. this is the secret if you will, that sets us apart.

Thank you for your time.