Dawn that was a good way to sum it all up taking in the whole picture and the individualness of this diet balancing.

I wanted to make a comment on the TC low starch and lite formulas. After not such great success with the Progressive Grass Balancer (coat was dull and lightened and he really didn't like it so most of it just went to waste anyway) we made a switch. We had just gotten Triple Crown down here and I compared the 2 formulas. I only feed 2 lbs of the Low Starch, even though they say to feed more. It was a good start to a balanced ratio of the minerals like Ca & Mg. The Lite has a ratio something like 4:1 while the LS is 2:1. And my other concern was the iron content. Since our hay is higher in iron than we like, I didn't want iron overload to be an issue. Lite has 515 ppm while LS has 170. I also had Dr. Kellon help me with our spreadsheet and found that with our hay (in that particular analysis) with the TCLS at 2 lbs we could come close to our ratios of other stuff with a premixed supplement Select 1 that was in a palatable
base. Magic hates anything powdered added, hates beet pulp and just about anything else you put in front of him so we had to come up with a solution as close to good that he would still eat. He likes his TCLS though and his coat has been healthier on it.

Magic has never been totally balanced to what we recommend on this group nor have we had his ACTH numbers to be right where we want either, always behind the curve with our medication increases, so the decline over the past 2 1/2 years that we have seen can probably be attributed to those two factors. We had to do the best we could do and still got a wonderful 2 years of great rides, driving and showing while keeping him sound.

I will say this. When we tried to raise the amount of TCLS we were feeding to 3 and then 4 lbs, he started peeing a lot more so we had to cut it back down to 2 lbs.

But the point is to consider all the pieces of the puzzle. NSC of course first but the other minerals and nutrients and how they balance to your hay and other parts of the diet. Then observe how the horse is doing on it. And as soon as there is any increase of IR signs figure out what has changed and fix it.

I'm going off on another point but it is related. After getting the diet back where it needed to be he had another bout with increased urine output. Ends up that the leaves coming off the trees was the culprit and we moved him to a different dry lot to see. And sure enough it came back down to normal again.

Hope some of this has been helpful.
Kathy Saucier & Magic

4b. Re: Triple Crown Low Starch
Posted by: "parkell2001" parkell2001@... parkell2001
Date: Wed Oct 17, 2007 8:02 am ((PDT))
.....My experience has been you need to look at each horse as an
individual. Discuss your situation with Dr. Kellon and other's on this
board who have a lot more knowledge about what works and what might
need tweaking in your case. I personally feel that you have to look at
everything you are doing. If I have good quality, low NSC hay with
balanced minerals, decent water, pasture management that allows my
horses exercise without gorging on high sugar grass, a readily
available feed that is just slightly over the NSC but has all the
minerals, vitamins, etc. that complement my hay, no sugar treats, and
balanced frequent hoof care, and my horses are doing well, I'm not
going to fret that my bagged feed is slightly over the absolute ideal
in NSC. Now if my precushings mare starts to have issues or
backslides, then I will tighten her diet up even more......