I have to say that there are a few companies that start to address my whims by offering ration balancers, but none that seem to finish the job in that they do not provide a balanced feedstuff for additional calories. Most suggest the feeding of oats.
I'm not a big oat fan. They tend to be dusty, the digestibility is poor, they're not cal/phos balanced...etc. Every once in a while I'll feed them out to see if I like them better, but I never do.
All I want is to be offered a product to be fed in conjunction with the ration balancer for added energy if needed.
I'm fussy. In particular I want a product that runs around 20% NSC (I'm not feeding metabolically challenged horses), and has 10-12% fat. It would have minimal vitamin/mineral fortification, just enough to balance its ratios, nothing more. And I want it extruded. I like some of the science behind extruded feeds- particularly the science that shows them to have more complete starch digestibility before the feedstuffs reach the hindgut. (Of course the potential lies to create different energy source feeds- for example a low NSC feed for the metabolically challenged, but I'm focusing on the athletic type horse here.)
So, for my wonderful Gelin, I would perhaps feed 2# daily of his ration balancer plus 4# daily of additional energy feed for when he's working, and just the 2# daily of the ration balancer when he's having periods of time off. (please note that ration balancers tend to be very low in calories, they usually have the caloric equivalent of grass hay.)
Triple Crown's suggestion was that I feed their Complete as a top dress of energy for their 30% supplement.
Good idea, but Complete isn't extruded. I WANT EXTRUDED.
And I want it now, thankyouverymuch! ;)
(to answer the most obvious question, of course I dream of this at night and even have designs for the bags in my head of my ultimate, elite two-phase feeding system- the name I'm still debating over!)
