Feed Balancers

[scattymare]

Further to my last post, I am going to go shopping at the weekend for the most economical feed balancer. Any ideas? I have looked on line and the choice is endless - Bailes Lo-Cal & others, Equilibra, Blue Chip, Dengie do one. Are they all really the same? In the past I have used a NAF multi vit supplement - does this provide the same sort of things?
Opinions please.

[baymare]

i feed baileys low cal balancer.its about £23 but shop around as i have seen it for £28.i give it with molliechaff hoofkind.my ponys are looking super on this.especially as the grass is drying up here in cornwall.i feed 3 ponys on this and it has lasted one month.good stuff.bay.

[fimacg]

I also use lo-cal but with dengie hi-fi light. again they are all doing really well on it. I' tried the hoofkind and Brave had an allergic reaction to it.... silly pony!

[racaille]

I have never fed a balancer. They simply have hay (sometimes luzerne depending on workload) and a mineral/salt. The boys are all fine. Do you actually NEED a balancer or is it just in case?

[duckles]

Like Racaille, I don't think they are really necessary/esssential but I do feed Bailey's Lo Cal balancer myself (just in case ). I thinks its very good and quite economic and I like to know that they are getting all the right vitimins and minerals. I know we humans don't need to take vitimin supplements either but I have been doing so for the last few years and I do think they are good.
The YO doesn't feed anything and her horses are all fine, healthy and hardy and doing well. But I suppose I am slightly overprotective of the boys (although when it comes to rugs, I definitely am not compared to all of you guys!)

[fimacg]

Before I started giving Chompy the Lo-Cal his feet were awful, really crumbly and was forever getting corns and cracks and the farrier had to nail the shoe on really high up his foot, to the point where i started to by farriers formula for him.

now on the Lo-Cal his feet are fab hard as nails and no more problems, so I would say yes it definately has an effect, Lo-Cal is higher in biotin than other feed balancers which is why I chose it but I use it for all of them and they are all fantastic on it, none of them lack energy and it definately helps with the diet too

[fleabitten]

You can get these wee treat things scatty off dodson and horrell i think which are vitamin and mineral supplements and you just feed them in your hand - thought that was ingenious. However tub doesnt look very big and looking on the shopping section of google you can get a fair idea of prices - i think cheapest is around 6 pound, but i guess it depends on how many pieces you feed. www.dodsonandhorrell.com/products/horse-ranges/tailor-made/equi-bites.html

Have never fed a balancer myself although did have a sample bag of lo cal once and it looked good.

[frankiesmum]

frank has had lo cal and did really well on it, hes now on equimins advanced concentrate (was suggested this for barefoot aid) and this seems to be really good to. annax

[jane]

I feed Lo-Cal because the land in this area is notoriously poor, a sack lasts me 6 weeks exactly.

[rainbow]

just diggin this post back up as was shopping round for balancers. I was recomended to try top spec but at £28 a bag even i only use a little bit of it is still quite a large sum of money!
not sure how much a bag of lo cal is but out of the two what would u try. i knw reading through this that most use local. Just trying to weigh out costs

[jane]

Lo-cal costs about £23 and some pence. So call it £24.00, it lasts Debs (who is 14hhh and approx 500kg) six weeks exactly. So that works out at about 50 something pence a day. This is far cheaper than blue chip.

I am not a huge fan of supplements or balancers really but given that Debs is getting on a bit, works quite hard and the ground here is known to be very poor and lacking in vitamins and minerals I use the Lo-cal.

I think Debs looks pretty good on it too.

[rainbow]

so rosie is 14hh also but weighs 438kg and is slightly over weight hmm is just seems alot if u go on price. so should last a bit longer with rosie