The story of

Optimus Equine Feed

Part 1 Why did my horse just stop working?

2002:

My previously enthusiastic and willing stallion is now suddenly stopping and it feels as though some unseen force has grabbed his back legs and we are stuck. A mare can trot right by and he doesn’t care. He just hangs his head and won’t move. “ He’s just being lazy. Use the whip. Put on spurs” Nothing worked. Sent him back swimming. No energy they said. Time to do some research. Hmmm. Equine polysaccharide storage myopathy. Checked all the boxes. Needs high fat, low starch diet. At the time, no commercial feeds had caught on to this yet. Low starch was considered under 30% and nothing available was more than 6% fat. Then it was what kind of fat to add? Canola didn’t freeze or go bad as fast as others. This turned out to be a good choice. (Corn and vegetable oils are very high in Omega 6 fatty acids and very low in omega 3 fatty acids, which makes them very pro inflammatory. ) Next, what supplements? No one really knew. But CoQ10, Vitamin E, and flax were repeatedly touted. So for years, Sanderson lived on Alfalfa cubes, canola oil, flax, rice bran, and salt. After about 3 weeks on this, his energy improved, so I sent him back to the pool. He was amazing. They kept him and kept increasing his time until he got up to 45 minutes. I went there to ride him to see how he felt. The track went around the mare fields. He passaged for 4 miles. My entire abdominal cavity was sore for a week. But hooray! I brought him back home. Everything was good, except his hoof quality was suffering. Something was missing. Introducing ration balancers. So, we start on a balancer made for alfalfa. Hooves started looking better but it was time to collect semen. Sperm counts plummeted. Now what? Back to the research. Soy. Ugh soy, while great for protein has lots of phytoestrogens and has an 8:1 Omega 6 to omega 3 ratio. Now we need all the hoof, coat, and muscle support from other sources. Enter the 15 supplements a day club. I had to make his portions up for the barn every week. It took hours. Then I found Figuerola EquineSaver®️. Hallelujah! 300 ingredients, including all the special stuff for his muscles, hooves, even immune, joint and probiotics… and cheaper! Was it too good to be true? Worth a try. Plus he had started losing some energy again. Well, as a posted on a forum for EPSM (now PSSM) cost of swimming, supplements, cubes, oil, etc… Being run away with…PRICELESS! My boy was back! Sperm counts through the roof! But I was pretty paranoid about the grass and hay in Illinois and how much sugar it contained so he only had dirt turn out. I regret that, knowing what I know now. But he was healthy and sound until at 20.5 (January 2018) he had what I thought was an impaction. But know now he had an aortic rupture. We found him one morning with no signs of struggle. Though my heart still hurts the lessons learned from him stick with me forever.

Part 2 Realizing how much diet affected all horses

We put everyone on high fat, low starch. Everyone benefitted. I now realized that commercial feeds were really about making horses fat as if they were going to be butchered. My Cushings horse was fine until she was 32. I wish I had not used the ration balancers on everyone else. I had just added EquineSaver®️and that seemed to be okay for the mares and geldings. I wasn’t worried about sperm counts on them. But we had a mare that every time she came in heat, she foundered. I wish now I had pulled her off soy.

Cuchicheo, my Andalusian/TB cross gelding always had a cresty neck and looked obese. I worked him hard 6 days a week, used the ration balancers theory and practically starved him. He was miserable. Always bordering on a laminitis event. I couldn’t get weight off of him! But he wasn’t fat. He was inflamed. Once switched over to this formula, he at first lost too much weight. My fat boy was now no longer fat.  Now he can enjoy the normal amount of forage a 16h3’’ horse should eat, and with even no or sporadic work he is no longer overweight.

2017: Phantom was producing milk, even with not having had a baby for 6 years. She had a huge, ugly sarcoid on her neck. And we could not get her pregnant. Infection developed after insemination. (Turns out, she had the tip of a swab stuck in her uterus. We removed that and that stopped the infections.) Recurring infections and a weakened immune system had given her chronic lymphangitis. Possible pssm horse. Removed soy, increased fat. Sarcoid disappeared! Milk stopped! On the right track. What to use for protein when pregnant? Well, I was looking at the nutrition information on a bag of peas, because I’m a vegetarian and was looking for creative ways to add protein. Low and behold! Peas are almost identical to ration balancers in nutrients! Boom! Put her on peas with her other food. Her hooves, coat, everything improved. Unfortunately we couldn’t gain control of the lymphangitis and she was euthanized because her leg got way too big and her last flare up was terribly uncomfortable for her, but we did solve many of the issues and at that point I had my soy replacement.

Enter Jara, an Andalusian mare. Jara came with that swollen, inflamed look and sarcoids on her neck and by the girth. Tried her on peas, salt, and equine saver. Inflammation gone, sarcoidosis disappeared. Then she was working and pregnant, so we put her on the full array. Unfortunately this was her first foal and she lost it, so upon rebrewing she came out of training. She had a lovely, healthy foal and produced plenty of milk and came right back into work.  We have since found straight alfalfa hay makes her very tense, but the alfalfa in the feed does not affect her. She again blew up like a balloon when given progesterone to regulate heat cycles because she lives in close proximity to a stallion. But after taking her of it when she was 400# over weight, she is slowly but surely getting back to normal on Optimus Equine, even though it is high in fat. Trying to lower the calorie content took things out of balance, and she did not lose significant weight. And she can enjoy grass!

2019: I start mixing my feed in batches to feed the barn. Alfalfa pellets, pease, rice bran, flax, salt mixture, canola oil, and EquineSaver®️. We start having Pete Ramey as our farrier. I consult with him about my formula. Decide to have it tested and compare it to my math. He suggests higher levels of zinc and copper and magnesium. Trying to find foodstuffs to bump up these levels took other things out of balance, but in the meantime we start to see really great coats and hooves and good energy. Not crazy nervous energy, but good working energy.

There was math. So so much math

Then suddenly Konga starts to shed. At 27, with Cushings after not shedding for 3 years, he sheds his winter coat revealing a gorgeous bright red shiny chestnut summer coat. His goopy eyes were clear. His weight was perfect and no crusty neck or fat pads. What?! He remained on prascend. And did eventually succumb to laminitis from Cushings, but he was so much healthier after the switch.

Part 3 I’m on to something.

Something big.  Every horse shows improvement on this. Time to find a manufacturer. Early attempts tried to make it a pellet, but they weren’t very strong and often turned to powder. So we made a mixed textured feed. I found Banks Mill Feed, in Aiken, SC. Jesse Waters patiently worked with me through all the tests, and tweaks to the formula we have now. We added some Zinc and copper Chelates and Magnesium Oxide, and the final formula is about perfect in its balance.

Speaking of price point, it is $85 for a 50# bag. However, since there are no fillers, and there’s no need for supplements, because EquineSaver®️ is already in there, it is extremely efficient, and generally you feed about 1/2 of what you normally would, so it is actually the same as a premium feed, less if you’re using supplements at all. So if people really do the math, Optimus Equine Feed is the bargain.

How much is your feed bill, really?

Some common things I hear:

“ My horse gets fat on air. He doesn’t need a high fat feed. “

    I’m going to go out on a limb here and bet you’re doing what I was doing and not feeding enough, but feeding the wrong thing. Get away from soy and wheat middlings and if you want to do that in a formula that already has everything your horse needs, in balance try Optimus Equine Feed.

If you’re not feeding what the label on your bag recommends, you’re not getting the guaranteed nutrients stated on the label. But most feeds recommend 6-12 lbs a day. There’s a whole lot of fillers in there. So your horse gets fat on the recommended amount so you cut it in half. But now you find you need a hoof supplement because your horses hooves are starting to lose integrity. Then your horse is working hard because you’re trying to get that extra weight off him, but it’s not fat it’s inflammation, so you’re running his legs off on weak hooves but he still has a crusty neck and fat pads at his tail head. And now he needs a joint supplement and his once shiny coat is dull and lackluster. Next, because his diet is restricted, he appears to colic, but the vet finds ulcers. Now he’s on ulcer meds, hoof supplements, joint supplements, and still overweight but under nourished. Switching to a ration balancer might help the hooves and coat, but not the weight. There’s still the soy thing. And the joints, and the ulcers…

That feed that you’re only feeding a little to your horse has just cost you way more than Optimus Equine Feed.

Optimus Equine Feed is meant to be fed at about half of what other commercial feeds have on their labels. Small Quarter horses, large ponies, Arabians, and that size 14-15 hands are generally getting 2-2.5 lbs per day. Not per feeding. Per day.

My Friesians, warmblood, Andalusian x TB are getting 4 lbs per day. They all are about 16-17 hands and wear size 81 blankets.

My growing warlander girls are at 3lbs per day. They are just getting to 15hands and will probably top at 15h2”.

The bigger warmbloods and small drafts get 4.5-5lbs a day. And only a 17h hard keeper TB and 2 18+hand Clydesdales were getting more than that. The TB got 5.5lbs per day, the smaller Clyde got 6lbs per day, and the larger Clyde got 7 lbs per day.

So if I feed my horse 4lbs per day, and he needs no other supplement, he is at a cost of $6.80 per day plus the cost of hay or pasture to keep his body weight. (Forage should always come first.)

Now I get a bag of pretty good feed from the store. I pay $45. for it. The recommended feeding amount is 6-12 lbs a day, and I go ahead and tell the barn feed a scoop in the morning and a scoop at night. That’s roughly 6 lbs per day. I find this does not provide him with enough nutrients so I up to 8lbs a day. That is $7.20 a day and I don’t have any other support that the EquineSaver®️ offers. I haven’t saved anything just because the bag price is cheaper.