minerals

Kenneth, I am not familiar with the DuMor loose minerals for horses…just their mineral blocks (which are full of crappy by-products and molasses). Are you sure you don’t have a bag of the cow minerals? In that case I would not feed to the horses as the potential Urea cross contamination could make them sick.

When it comes to free choicing minerals, buy clean minerals without molasses. Free choice and molasses do not belong in the same sentence. I use alot of free choice minerals and also feed out 100 lbs of kelp each year free choice (a 50lb bag each in spring and in fall) for 6 horses.

I use dynamite free choices. They are good quality and cover my needs nicely.

https://www.dynamitespecialty.com/OrderCustom.asp?InvDispCatID=4&InvDispSubCatID=40

ABC has a long list of free choice minerals and I have used them in the past (the copper and magnesium in particular) with good results.

http://www.abcplus.biz/Categories.aspx?Id=Free_Choice_Minerals

Horses are amazing in that they will forage for minerals in their environment very intelligently. You can encourage this instinct by fencing a browsing area for them in your pasture (some shrubs and wood trash). Mineral deficiencies are more common in horses with limited turnout, because of this.

What do you feed your horses?

I use Moorman’s Grostrong.

I use Moorman’s Grostrong like Grey but not sure if it is alway’s mineral deficiency that causes wood or metal chewing. I have a couple
of mares that will eat the paint off a vehicle if left in the field but other horses won’t bother it. I wonder if some of it could be just boredom or ?

I leave out three blocks, also. A trace mineral salt block, a sulfur salt block and a cobalt salt block. Sometimes one block gets hit really hard by everybody and disappears. Other times they ignore it. It comes in fits and spurts. I had one that gnawed on wood when she was in the tie stall but I think it was just anxiety. At the time, I tried everything under the sun to coat the wood with something repugnant enough that she wouldn’t chew on it, to no avail. I tried six different commercial preparations marketed for just such a thing and all it did was slow her down a bit. The behavior has since disappeared on its own.

Thanks for the link, Lanny. It reminded me about rule number one concerning feeding horses. Horses are meant to have there heads near the ground grazing or foraging about 18 hours a day. So increasing their hay ration or figuring out how to make it last longer is key to preventing boredom and worse, digestive issues like ulcers. I love the slow feed nets. They are nets with small openings (come in various sizes) that cause the horse to eat slowly, so hay lasts longer and best of all, they waste very little. They have really cut my hay usage down and hay that I put out in the am lasts until I feed at night.

Shire nets are the cheapest and are sturdy, but the holes are somewhat larger than the other more pricey nets. But there are tns of options if you just google ‘slow feeder nets’