What is the best kind of food to feed horses? Would it be just horse feed or grass?

We always fed our horses a mixed sweet feed which had your cracked oats, light molasses and mineral salt added to it. With that, we gave them a good quality hay that was partial grass, partial alfalfa, and then they were turned out every day, in order to graze on fresh grass. I believe that, like humans, horses need a bit of variety in their diets.

It really depends on your horse. I used to feed just a high quality bermuda/coastal hay with a free choice mineral, and Psyillium. But now that I have a senior horse who cant eat the hay because of his teeth he is now on Senior and bermuda pellet lightly soaked to make it easy on him. I also now have a pregnant mare, so she too is now on a concentrate along with the bermuda grass hay. I prefer to use Purina products. They are always consistant on the quality of their product and no matter where I am in the US I can buy Purina. That way I don't have to worry about having to switch over feeds when I move. Ideally you would want your horse to be able to graze all day on a nice pasture since that is how they are designed but that is not always possible. So you have to do what works best for your horse and you. There is no ONE way to feed a horse.

All of my horses love the sweet feed and each get some of it everyday. I feed my nursing mamas and pregnant horses Omelene. The feed store suggested that it has more of what they need.

We fed sweet feed for years but remember this please certain breeds are more prone to Insulin Resistance later in their years, some even younger than 8! We had no problems until a farrier mess up and a feed ration choice that was way too much for our girls. Our Blm mare is IR but doing okay

We now only feed a teacup full of NLB to go with any supplements, hay and grass only. If there comes a need for grain then we will stay with Nutrena Lite Balance or Nutrena Safe Choice.

It gets mind boggling doesn't it LOL

Oh wow, Insulin Resistence... something we never really discussed when I had horses. We usually went light on the molasses anyhow and, then, if we needed to add a little extra, we just had a bottle that we'd pour a little in and mix it up.

Of course, this was back in the day lol. Isn't it funny how many more maladies are arising now, both in humans and animals? I'm sure that Insulin Resistence was probably always there, but it was never a worry for us.

We only have 6 acres on which our horses can graze. At different times of the year we section it off and plant winter wheat, red top grazer and something else (which I am unable to think of at the moment). Due to that reason we feed our horses everyday. If you were going to feed everyday, would you still use the Nutrena Lite Balance or Safe Choice? Or, in that case, would you choose something different?

I was also wondering, what are the symptoms of Insulin Resistance in horses and how is it treated?

Either the Lite Balance or Safe Choice, reason being is our horses are easy keepers and they are on a lot smaller than what you have *we do have 20 acres*
I am sure your feeding table is fine just have to remember that over the years a horse ages and its system changes is all.

A cresty neck, laminitis incidents, only a resting blood test can detect it. Our mare passed the first one and failed the next one some months later. Removing the horse from all sugar and starches and high protein. Low NSC hay and pasture. Timothy is low in NSC, NO alfalfa or wheat type hay or rye grass.

Insulin Resistance is like type 2 diabetes in humans controlled with Diet and Exercise mainly providing the horse isn't having a laminitic episode. Some don't go laminitic but it does come with the territory. Usually caused by a pituitary gland tumor a slow growing one.
Some people use Cypro for these horses but it backfired on my mare and she was removed from it.

Yes more and more horses are coming up with this and you have to fit the diet to the horse not every horse will respond the same way.

A great place to learn if you can handle stuffy people is a Yahoo group at
http://pets.groups.yahoo.com/group/EquineCushings/

But still great information!!!