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Post by ladynowak on Nov 12, 2010 23:11:43 GMT 1
To be honest, anything that has the ability to absorb lots of water should be soaked in my view Find it strange that people wouldn't dream of feeding sugar beet dry, but feed conditioning cubes/nuts/top spec without soaking it- all of which swell up a huge amount!
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Nov 17, 2010 13:26:55 GMT 1
Find it strange that people wouldn't dream of feeding sugar beet dry, but feed conditioning cubes/nuts/top spec without soaking it- all of which swell up a huge amount! I have tried soaking spillers high fibre nuts and top spec fibre plus cubes (when the boy wasn't eating his supplements) and neither increase in size, they just turn to slop
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Post by mmel001 on Nov 17, 2010 13:43:32 GMT 1
I heard that in America they feed Sugar Beet unsoaked and think we are crazy for soaking it. Apart from the fact that unsoaked beet does expand, wouldn't the other main worry be choke?
Most pellet feeds these days seem to recommend you soak or at least dampen them to try and avoid this, unless feeding small amounts. For example I feed Lucie Nuts and you can feed a small amount unsoaked, so I scatter a handful around Indie's stable at night.
Pony nuts etc, when I spoke to a feed supplier they told me that the general advice is to soak them, but that you don't have to.
The other thing I was told is that horses get a lot of liquid from their feed, grass etc contains an amount of water, so if you feed dry I guess they would need to be able to replace that water somehow?
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Post by suzirock on Dec 10, 2010 20:43:04 GMT 1
On a bit of a tangent here, but...I may have got my wires crossed completely here, but I was under the impression that bog standard sugar beet pellets as we know them don't actually contain 'sugar'?!?!! I was told by a nutritionalist that the sugar beet pellets we buy are the waste from the sugar beet factory i.e. the factory takes out all the sugar for us humans, and the pellets we buy is the rest of the beet plant (or vegetable) and all it is, is fibre? Therefore, by feeding lovely wet sugar beet you are only aiding the absorption of the meal the horse is eating at the time, and it really doesn't have much bearing on weight gain? (apart from obviously its fibre and diegsting fibre helps a horse's natural central heating system). Mollassed sugar beet obviously has 'sugars' but then still not really enough to cause a horse to be overly fizzy. I may be utterly wrong so all comments welcomed he he!!
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Post by taklishim on Dec 10, 2010 21:24:05 GMT 1
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Post by anastasia55555 on Dec 13, 2010 16:39:04 GMT 1
:-( poor horse. A lady at paddocks next door to us has been found out to be feeding my friebds horse who was on strict grazing because of lami!! Person had been feeding him mix and/or chaff despite knowing he was getting over lami. Needless to say owner less than impressed, signs now up to say dont feed.
Hope it was 'kindness' as opposed to being horrible in the case above :-( either way is terrible
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shadsy
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Post by shadsy on Dec 26, 2010 21:51:16 GMT 1
re unsoaked beet: i definitely wouldn't recomend feeding unsoaked beet, i fed the shredded speedi beet and the pelleted alpha beet at different points last year to my horse, both expand massively as they soaked so surely this would cause a lot of problems in the insides. as far as time is concearned using speedi beet means that it takes 10 mins (5 if you use hot water) so really isn't that much of an issue and in this weather i like the idea of giving them a hot dinner, hot bran mash is after all considered the horse comfort food. however i don't currently feed sugar beet - due to the fact that the last bucket we made is solid frozen so i would say that your problem wouldn't be it going off but going solid!!
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Post by anastasia55555 on Dec 26, 2010 23:55:22 GMT 1
lol know the feeling shadsy, brought my ice block of sugar beet home to defrost. taken several kettles of boiling water, and sieved in between each one, as it goes cold so quickly. Will pour some hot on it tomorrow before taking it down to the field. Dont even get me started on carting warm water down to the field! at least 100 litres a day!
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Bay Mare
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Post by Bay Mare on Dec 27, 2010 11:25:34 GMT 1
On a bit of a tangent here, but...I may have got my wires crossed completely here, but I was under the impression that bog standard sugar beet pellets as we know them don't actually contain 'sugar'?!?!! Even unmollassed sugar beet contains between 5-7% sugar which can be enough for the more sensitive sols! I would never feed UK sugar beet unmollassed, it swells so much in the bucket (even Speedibeet) that I just wouldn't risk it. I have heard of it being fed unsoaked in the US but wonder if it's a different product to what we're used to
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Post by Yann on Dec 27, 2010 11:55:03 GMT 1
Speedibeet has a sugar content of 5%. There are very few feeds that have a lower sugar content than that, I think <10% is considered to be the safe limit for metabolic horses as a general rule.
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