I developed this recipe to put condition on a very old draft horse. It requires a mill for crushing the oats. (I use a small old-style cast-iron mill that is set up in the feed room.) If you don't have access to one of these, you could substitute rolled oats (oatmeal) from the local feed store, or from a mill that prepares livestock feeds, but it isn't as good as freshly crushed oats, which have needed fiber and fresh-ground nutrition. This mix has several steps that are done in separate buckets, and the feed requires soaking from morning to evening or vice versa, but once you get the routine in place, it is easy to prepare.
Ingredients:
4 quarts crushed oats (milled enough to crush hulls) - measured after grinding
1 quart steam-rolled barley
4 quarts alfalfa pellets
2 quarts beet pulp
2 quarts wheat bran
1 scant quart crushed flax seed (2 cups whole flax, ground)
1 quart vegetable oil (yes, a whole quart)
1 cup apple cider vinegar
1 cup molasses
1 oz (2 Tablespoons) salt
STEP ONE: Combine the oats and barley with 1 cup apple cider vinegar and 1 quart water.
STEP TWO: Combine the alfalfa pellets with 1 quart vegetable oil.
STEP THREE: Combine the beet pulp with 1 quart water.
STEP FOUR: Combine the ground flax, molasses and salt with 1 quart BOILING water. Put a cover on it to hold the heat in.
Leave all of these buckets of stuff to soak, then come back that evening or the next morning, depending on when you started, and dump all ingredients from all the buckets into a tub. Add the wheat bran, and mix until everything is well combined.
That's it. After this sits for a while, the mix gets a little drier, and the alfalfa pellets soften up and fall apart, as they soak up the excess moisture in the feed. All of the farm animals surveyed so far have loved this recipe: horses, cows, goats, and even dogs.
This mix makes about 3.5 gallons, which on this farm lasts about a day and a half. I would not keep it around for much longer than that, especially in hot weather, in case it might get moldy. I haven't tested that point, as it always gets gobbled up too quickly.
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Hi Elia,
ReplyDeleteGreat post. I grew up on a farm in Iowa and this sounds like the sort of thing my Dad would have mixed up had we had any horses. By the time I was big enough to help, farming in Iowa had become totally mechanized, with basically opnly two crops, and required pesticides, herbicides, fertilizers, etc. When I ask about organic, most of my Iowa relatives look at me kinda funny... :-)
Thanks for writing. Alan