Reasons why Pryde's EasiFeed is different

Only the best quality ingredients

When it comes to the ingredients we use in your horse’s feeds we are fussy (to say the least). Raw materials are specially selected, and once they arrive at the mill they undergo a series of tests to make sure they are up to our standard. Anything that doesn’t meet our tight specifications is sent back to where it came from.

Same high quality ingredients in every bag

At Pryde’s, each feed has its own set recipe that is used to make that feed day in, day out. This means you get the same high quality product in every bag of feed you buy. We don’t least cost mix any of our feeds.

Feeds are made in a dedicated horse mill

We place the highest priority on feed safety for your horses. To make sure nothing ends up in our feed that could hurt your horse, there are no drugs, antibiotics, ionophores, hormones or urea kept in the mill, so they can never end up in our feeds.

Regular feed analysis

we have our own in-house, high tech laboratory that is used to constantly monitor feed protein, moisture and water activity levels. Feeds are also regularly and extensively tested by an independent laboratory for protein, mineral and heavy metal content to make sure what we say is in the bags is actually in there and that there is no contamination with heavy metals.

Quality Assurance Programs

Pryde’s EasiFeed is a Feed Safe accredited mill, with all feeds being produced under the ‘Feed Safe’ code of good manufacturing practice.

Family owned and operated

Being a family owned and operated company, you will always get personal service with Pryde’s. And with the feeds carrying our name, we are dedicated to ensuring only the very best quality feed goes into our bags.

Customer Service

We are dedicated to supporting anyone who needs help with feeding their horse. So whether you have one horse or 100, if you need help we are only a phone call or an email away, try us.

Easy to digest

Research over the last 20 years has proven the benefits of extruding feeds for horses. Extruded feeds are super digestible, so they are used efficiently by horses, meaning you can feed less for a better result. They also eliminate the problems caused by feeding uncooked grains.

Protein, protein, protein

A major point of difference between our feeds and other feeds on the market is protein quality. Pryde’s EasiFeed uses premium quality protein from soybean supported by excellent protein from lupins and faba beans to give your horse the best possible proteins available. We NEVER use poor quality protein sources like cottonseed meal in our feeds.

Range

We have a feed to suit all horses and all budgets. If you are not sure which feed is best suited for your horse, give your local Pryde’s representative a call.

The Problem with Pasture

For anyone driving around the country at the moment it is evident that we have just had a wet summer, with green pasture in abundance. Pasture is a wonderful resource for thoroughbred breeders, providing energy, protein, vitamins, minerals and the all important fibre for broodmares and growing horses alike. Access to pasture also means the need to provide hay and ‘hard feed’ is reduced, taking pressure off feed bills. However pasture brings with it its own set of issues that need to be carefully managed to prevent structural issues in young stock and obesity issues in mares.

Too much of a good thing        

High quality pasture contains a lot of energy (calories). It is also palatable and if there is plenty of it, mares and young horses can easily eat enough to exceed their true daily energy requirement. For the mares, this means gaining weight and having issues with obesity. For young horses it means growing too quickly and potentially causing developmental orthopaedic diseases including OCD that are associated with rapid growth.

Hard feeds should be cut back

It is not easy to control a horse’s pasture intake and while you can use strategies like strip grazing to control calorie intake, the first thing that should be done in a situation where mares are getting too fat or weanlings and yearlings are growing too fast on high quality pasture is reduce the grain based ‘hard feeds’ being fed. This will help to reduce their overall energy intake and hopefully slow weight gains.

Pasture won’t meet mineral requirements

It is well known that a majority of Australian pastures don’t contain enough copper, zinc, selenium or iodine to support a broodmare or growing horse’s requirements. In many situations calcium and phosphorus are also below optimum levels and very occasionally manganese will be deficient. Under ‘normal’ pasture conditions, the hard feeds used in a diet (provided they are good quality feeds) fill these mineral ‘holes’ left by the pasture so that together the pasture and feed provide a diet that meets all requirements.

However, in a good season when the amount of hard feed is reduced or even removed from the diet to help control weight gain, horses are suddenly reliant on pasture to meet their nutrient needs and this WILL leave mineral deficiencies in the diet.

Use a balancer pellet

The simplest way to correct the mineral deficiencies that will be present in pasture based diets is to use a mineral balancer pellet. Balancer pellets are designed to fill the mineral holes left by pastures without adding excess energy to diets that would contribute to weight or growth rate problems. Balancer pellets will have a feeding rate of between 500 g to 1 kg/day and provided they are well formulated and fed according to the manufacturer’s directions will cover both a mares and growing horse’s needs for extra calcium, phosphorus, copper, zinc, selenium and iodine as well as a range of other minerals and vitamins.

Test your pasture

While we know most pastures will be deficient in the minerals discussed above, pastures, depending on where and how they are grown, often have their own unique issues that can cause problems with the sound growth and development of weanlings and yearlings. These issues can include:

• More phosphorus than calcium – it is increasingly common to see more phosphorus in a pasture than calcium. When this is the case the phosphorus blocks the absorption of calcium and creates a calcium deficiency.
• Too much zinc, not enough copper – this is not as common but some pastures can contain more than 5 parts zinc for every 3 parts copper and in these situations the zinc blocks the absorption of copper, creating a copper deficiency.
• Too much potassium – Some pasture have extreme levels of potassium (>50 g/kg DM). Horses on some farms are consuming in excess of 1000% of their daily requirement for potassium. While we don’t have published scientific evidence in equines, data in humans, rats and ruminants show that high potassium diets disrupt the absorption and metabolism of magnesium and calcium, two of the most important minerals involved in bone development. Circumstantial evidence suggests this is also the case for horses.

These problems with pasture are especially evident in a good season when horses are eating diets that are almost solely pasture. Talk to your feed supplier or equine nutritionist about testing your pasture so that they can then tailor a feeding program based around your pasture analysis results.

Beware of the sub-tropical grasses

Sub-tropical pastures that are common found in coastal and hinterland areas including kikuyu and buffel grass come with their own unique problem ... they bind calcium with a compound called oxalate in such a way that it is not available for absorption by the horse. Horses grazing on these pastures become calcium deficient and are at risk of a disease known as nutritional secondary hyperparathyroidism, commonly called Bighead. In ‘normal’ seasons when horses graze these pastures in conjunction with hard feed and hay the amount of pasture and oxalate consumed is too small to cause problems. However, when pasture quality is high and horses are eating a diet that is almost exclusively pasture, a calcium deficiency can occur in some horses very quickly even if a balancer pellet is provided.

Horses grazing these pastures MUST be supplied with enough calcium to keep the calcium to oxalate ratio of the diet above 0.5 parts calcium to 1 part oxalate. To achieve this, use a balancer pellet that has been designed specifically for horses grazing high oxalate pasture or have your nutritionist design a ration with extra calcium.

Pasture... use it wisely

Pasture is a brilliant resource but it needs to be used wisely. Pasture is able to meet many of the nutrient needs of mares and young stock, but nearly every pasture will have mineral deficiencies or imbalances that are easiest corrected through the use of a pasture balancer pellet. The real key to feeding correctly when pasture is abundant is to have your pastures tested so that you know exactly what is too high or low in your pastures allowing you to feed accordingly.

Pryde’s EasiFeed Pasture Balancer Pellets

Pryde’s EasiFeed have a range of pasture balancer pellets to help you feed horses according to the season. The Pryde’s 150 Balancer Pellet is a 15% protein pellet that is ideal for mares and growing horses grazing lush pastures. The 150 Balancer pellet is heavily fortified with minerals allowing you to feed just 600 grams per day to meet the mineral needs of pregnant mares, weanlings and yearlings.

The Pryde’s EasiFeed High Calcium Balancer Pellet with 50 g/kg of calcium has been developed specifically for mares, weanlings and yearlings grazing sub-tropical grasses to reduce the risk of calcium deficiency and Bighead disease that can develop on these pastures.

Pryde’s EasiFeed also provide a free pasture analysis service to their clients so that feeding programs can be tailored to your specific pasture.

For detailed assistance with your mare and growing horses diets and a pasture analysis service, please contact Pryde’s Pty Ltd on 1300 732 267, email info@prydes.com.au or go to Feed Selector

Feeding a Horse with Laminitis

Feeding a horse with a history of laminitis can be a time consuming and confusing task and one that, if not done properly, can have painful consequences for your horse.

The laminitic horse’s diet needs to be low in sugar (we could get all very technical here and call sugars non-structural carbohydrates, water soluble carbohydrates, starches, ether soluble carbohydrates or non-fibre carbohydrates, but let’s just keep it simple and say ‘sugar’). Sugars in feeds cause a horses blood insulin to rise after eating and this is what researchers now believe triggers most cases of laminitis and certainly most cases of grass or pasture laminitis.

As well as being low in sugar, the diet also needs to provide good quality protein to allow damaged hoof tissue to repair, as well as meet a horse’s requirements for vitamins and minerals.

The good news is, feeding a laminitic horse doesn’t have to be difficult. Here are some guidelines for making it a lot easier:

Base the diet on low sugar pasture or hay

All horse’s diets should be based on forage and the laminitic horse is no different. However they need low sugar forages. There are a few ways you can give your horse access to low sugar forages. These are:

• Allow your horse to graze in the very early hours of the morning until about 11 am as this is when pasture sugar levels are lowest. If you are unable to control the hours of the day your horse is allowed to graze, use a grazing muzzle to reduce your horse’s intake of pasture.

• Feed hays that are typically low in sugars. These include mature or stemmy tropical grass hays and mature or stemmy lucerne hay (including lucerne hay that has been weather damaged).

• If you can’t access these kinds of hays, soak the hay you do have available in warm water for 30 minutes, before tipping all of the water off, rinsing and feeding.

• Avoid any hays that are known to have high levels of sugar, including ryegrass hay, oaten, wheaten or barley hay.

• Lucerne haylage or silage that has been produced specifically for horses is also a low sugar forage option.

Feed according to your horses need to gain, hold or lose weight

Assess the body condition (fatness) of your horse and have a clear goal in mind as to whether you want the horse to gain, hold or lose weight.

Gain Weight

If the goal is to gain weight you should:

1. Provide your horse with access to as much low sugar pasture or hay as it wants to eat.

2. Feed a low sugar complete feed at the recommended rates for your horse’s bodyweight and current activity. Complete feeds will provide your horse with the calories, protein, vitamins and minerals it needs. OR Mix your own low sugar balanced feed by using high calorie unfortified feeds like soybean hulls or sugarbeet pulp, add your own vitamins and minerals via a low dose rate vitamin and mineral supplement and add protein from soybean, lupins or faba beans.

3. If additional weight gain is needed add some oil to the diet. Start with ¼ of a cup per day and gradually increase the amount if required.

Maintain Weight

To maintain your horses weight you should:

1. Allow the horse access to up to 2.5% of its bodyweight of low sugar forage (12.5 kg for a 500 kg horse) per day.

2. Balance the diet with a low dose rate vitamin and mineral supplement and additional protein from soybean, lupins or faba beans if your pasture or hay quality is poor.

3. Monitor your horse closely. If it is not holding its bodyweight on this diet, increase the amount of low sugar forage you are feeding and reassess your horse. If it still isn’t holding its bodyweight you can add a high calorie, low sugar unfortified feeds like soybean hulls or sugarbeet pulp to the existing diet. OR Switch to using a low sugar complete feed at the recommended rate for your horse.

Lose Weight

If your horse needs to lose weight you must do it carefully, as forcing the laminitic horse into rapid weight loss can also stop them from healing their damaged hoof tissue and may cause other problems like hyperlipaemia.  To gently encourage your horse to lose weight you should:

1. Feed up to 2% of your horses body weight (10 kg/day for a 500 kg horse) per day as low quality, low sugar forage, including mature or stemmy tropical grass hays and/or weather damaged lucerne hay.

2. Balance the diet with a low dose rate vitamin and mineral supplement and good quality protein from full fat soybean.

3. Constantly assess your horse’s body weight and adjust the diet according to the rate of weight loss. If your horse is not losing weight, reduce the amount of low sugar forage being fed to 1.5% of the horse’s current bodyweight (7.5 kg/day for a 500 kg horse). If this reduction doesn’t achieve the weight loss you want, reduce the amount of forage being fed to 1.5% of the horse’s ideal bodyweight.

To prevent boredom in these horses, make their forage hard to eat so it is more time consuming for them. One way you can do this is by placing their hay in 2 or 3 hay nets, which makes the hay hard to pull out. If you do feed hay out of hay nets you may need to dampen it down slightly to reduce dust. You should also feed their daily allocation of hay in 2 or 3 meals per day.

If the horse is able to exercise, a gentle exercise routine each day will also help them to lose weight and reduce their risk of further bouts of laminitis.

Never feed a grain or grain by-product based feed

If your horse needs extra feed in addition to the low sugar forage you are feeding you must be VERY careful when selecting a suitable feed. You should NEVER feed a feed to a laminitic horse if it has any of the following ingredients:

• Oats, corn, wheat, rice or barley

• Millrun, millmix, bran (rice or wheat), pollard

• Any form of steam flaked, micronized or extruded grain

So read all labels and lists of ingredients carefully before buying a feed and remember.It is buyer beware. Many feeds that contain grain by-products like millrun, bran or pollard advertise themselves as being ‘grain-free’. This is grossly misleading and these feeds present as much danger to your laminitic horse as a feed that contains grain. Other feeds claim to be ‘Low GI’, but again, if they contain any of the ingredients listed above, they should be avoided for laminitic horses.

If you are considering a particular feed for your laminitic horse, call the manufacturer to see if they have had the feeds sugar and starch levels tested and ask to see the results. Ideally, feeds for laminitic horses should have a sugar and starch level of less than 12%.

Make sure the diet is balanced!

It is very important to make sure the diet you are feeding your laminitic horse is balanced. Meeting the laminitic horses requirements for protein, amino acids, vitamins and minerals will help them recover from any previous bouts of laminitis, help them to resist other disease and infection and will keep them in good overall health.

Pryde’s Products that can help.

EasiSport

EasiKeeper

EasiOil

LupinPak

Dr Nerida Richards
Equilize Horse Nutrition Pty Ltd