Pellets and I have not gotten off to a good start. They seem to be all the rage for feeding to old horses, as they are said to be easy to digest, and our vet recommends them, so I decided to give them a try to see how they compared with our "Old-Horse Special Mash" (listed below). The old horse did like them, and ate them with relish (yum!), but this did not work out too well, as she choked on them, and we had to treat her aggressively for aspiration pneumonia. This was serious stuff, and the prognosis was 10 to 1 against. Fortunately the horse did not become seriously ill and fall down and die, and perhaps she choked without actually inhaling the pellets after all, but it was still a close call requiring extra work and expense and worry, and this gave me great pause on the subject of feeding pellets.
In twelve years of horse-keeping, I have never had a horse choke on its feed. Perhaps it wasn't just the pellets -- my vet said a horse can choke on anything -- but adding (Equine Senior) pellets was the only significant change I made to the feeding program, so this raised a red flag. As a result, I have set a policy that if pellets are to be used at all, they will only be used after they are soaked.
I would probably apply this policy to younger horses, too, if I were to feed them pellets... which I won't.
After this calamity, I experimented with soaking the pellets, and found that adding an equal portion of water to the pellets and soaking overnight yielded a nice non-soupy mush. I added 1/2 part of ground oats to that to make it a little more crumbly, and the old horse was able to eat it well... without choking.
I still prefer my own recipe, but this works okay, and it is good to have backup plans or alternatives to suit variations in situation.
I hope this helps somebody to prevent a potentially disastrous but easily avoidable problem.
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