Need to reduce feed in few weeks time - best way?

[The Original Crazywoman]

In 2 weeks time I'm going on holiday, and have a friend at the yard looking after my two for one week.

They have to be separated to be fed, and my TB oldie is on conditioning cubes and takes some time to eat his feed.

So to make life easier for Katy (my friend) I want to cut their feeds down from two a day to one. This means they can have hay in the morning, and hay + feed in the evening - and Katy will only have to separate them once.

Neither of them are on huge amounts. My mare is on level scoop of Alfa A + half scoop of sugar beet + 1 mug Lo-Cal. But I am cutting out the sugar beet so Katy doesn't have to keep mixing it up. TB is on 3/4 scoop of conditioning cubes and linseed oil (he won't eat chaff or sugar beet with it!).

Just wondered if I need to start cutting down the quantity of one feed per day, or whether I can just cut out the morning feed for a week without having to do it gradually.

I know it's not ideal to introduce new or large quantity feeds suddenly, but not sure about stopping them? :confused:

[Pink's lady]

Who's the boss of two of them? If it's the TB she shouldn't need to seperate them at all. Or if you're mare is and they are setttled.

We fed our lot bucket feeds in the field sometimes and just take account of the pecking order. They get a volume in relation to their position, so bossyboots takes th longest to eat - the excess is made up of hi-fi lite so it's just voume, not calories.

If you could work it out you could always add an extra scoop of hi-fi lite into your mares feed so she takes longer to eat and doesn't go steal you Tb's.

[Soot]

Ditto here!

Rambo and Billy need the same concentration of hard feed. Sadly Billy scoffs his in one breath and then eats Rambo's too.

So now Billy's gets topped up with lots of readigrass and chaff and
Rambo gets his straight. Another good trick is to put a big bucket of readigrass by each horse so often when they finish their hard feed they move on to the readigrass which takes ages to eat so don't chase the other horse away from their feed!

[The Original Crazywoman]

Thanks. My mare is the boss, and gets quite aggressive if food is around. I don't want to feed her more for the sake of it, as they both get plenty of hay.

It's not the problem about separating them - more about cutting their feeds down from two to one - should this be done gradually?

Thanks. :)