The name sweet feed refers to the mash of grains, usually rolled in molasses. It is used for feed for horses, cattle, sheep, and goats. It smells very good. It would make a great air freshener. This is basically junk food for animals. The sweet feed can be either corn/oat/barley cobs which are sugared with or without molasses or a mixture of grain and pellets, or the pellet is sweet with molasses.
Contains nutritionally adequate ingredients to feed your horses, cattle, and goats, and is an economical way to feed other animals with horses. This molasses-rich pellet will create a deliciously sweet taste to your horse feed and is a nutritionally superior feed for other animals. While molasses does contain sugar, today’s molasses in many sweet feed products have lower levels of sugar than those of a century ago. As with any feed-related issue, proper management can greatly reduce the problem. Sheep should never be given sweet feed, as the high sugar and starch content may cause digestive upsets like bloat and ruminal acidosis. Even if grains are given, they should be introduced into a feed type specifically designed for sheep.
Many years ago, the average textured sweet feed was made by crushing oats, corn, or barley into a powder, then grinding it into a powder to add vitamins and minerals. The inclusion of loose vitamins and minerals plus the finely ground protein resulted in a mix that contained an excess of fines. Molasses was used in these mixes to draw together the ingredients, control the dust and facilitate formula separation.
Anyone who has ever fed one of these early sweet feeds can attest to the fact that horses are capable of sorting the mix and eating whatever is most acceptable to them. Unfortunately, what they consider the most acceptable ingredients are not always actually those they require to balance their diet. In an experiment examining nutrient intake in order to influence growth, horses had nothing to do with the experimental ingredient mixed in their feed. They simply sorted it with intricate nose-and-lip movements, leaving it at the bottom of the feed tub.
Roles Technology Plays In Making Sweet Feed for Cattle and Other Livestock
Someone in a feed mill got fed up with fines, and no doubt motivated by customer complaints came up with a more effective system, the form of textured feeds. These feed pellets combine protein, vitamins, and minerals. The molasses is reduced in the mix because the loose ingredients are safely contained within the pellet. The mixing-pellet system has greatly improved the ability to deliver essential nutrients to equine feeds. It is guaranteed that the pelleted portion of the mix is consumed alongside readily acceptable nutrient carriers, including flavors.
With technology, the amount of protein, vitamin, and mineral fortification may be controlled by the number of pellets added to the mix. Sweet feeds formulated for maintaining mature horses tend to contain a smaller proportion of pellets. Unlike feeds that are designed for maintaining horses, a feed designed for broodmares or other broodmares typically contains more pellets that increase protein and nutrient fortification levels to recommended levels.
A good idea is to mix pellets in sweet feed. However, the nutritional effectiveness of the sweet feed depends upon the proper inclusion of pellets in the feed and the correct amount and type of feed being given to horses. Often, the horse owner desires to buy a more attractive-looking sweet feed, but if the recommended amount is fed, the horse will add weight.
The majority of horse owners prefer to feed less sweet feed to ensure their horses are getting the right number of calories to control their weight, but this will result in a diet lacking essential vitamins and minerals as well. To resolve this problem, we could provide the horse with the nutritious protein, vitamin, and mineral pellets separately from the sweet feed mix and feed it without the fattening grains and molasses. The horse can be fed a small amount of mixing pellet each day and no additional grain is provided, creating a diet food of sorts.
These diet food scenarios have shown to be effective when feeding broodmares in late pregnancy. Most mares will sail through pregnancy in good body condition and can be fed the recommended amounts of sweet feed to provide essential vitamins, minerals, and protein. In contrast to this, many mare owners have obese mares that simply do not require the extra calories provided by the grain portion of the diet. The risk of problems with fetal growth caused by failing to provide appropriate diet fortification in late pregnancy is simply unacceptable. The nutritionally dense mixing pellet can be fed to an overweight broodmare without the need to feed them a great deal of sweet feed to reach the same fortification levels.
For example, depending on the strength of the pellet, two pounds of mixing pellet can replace eight pounds of sweet feed in terms of protein, vitamins, and minerals. As such, feeding small quantities of mixing pellet to overweight broodmares is a viable management option. In the past, a similar practice has been used for feeding foals with special needs. When some foals undergo rapid growth spurts, their growth plates display an increased degree of sensitivity or swelling.
This case of swelling of the growth plates is called epiphysitis and is relatively common, though the condition can lead to more severe bone deformities if left untreated. This time of growth allows for rapid bone development; however, starving the foal of nutrients during this time will not slow down bone development. Reduced body weight can reduce the load that newly formed bone tissue must carry.