I don't know the company name, but here's what I've found out online - any comments?
Seems each 1100# horse will need 1 tray of barley grass per day, split in 2 feedings. Fed with low quality grass hay for roughage.
Takes 6 days to go from seed to grass, so you need to set up a new tray with about 2.5# of grain basically every day, and rinse the current trays daily too (to prevent mold?). This produces about 17# of sprouts.
It has double the protein and 4% more fiber than LMF Gold but has probably negligible fat.
It looks like 6# of barley sprouts has 7800 calories in it. Is my math right? (At 12 MJ/kg, that's 2866 calories in a kilogram, and 6# = 2.72 kg = 7800 cals.) (And I am calculating 6# because that's how much grain my horse eats in one sitting)
A full tray of 17# will then have 22,100 cals. That's massive!
And my calculations say 6# of LMF Gold has 2938 calories from fat (9 cals/gram) and 1306 cals from protein (4 cals/gram)... total 4424 calories. But how do I calculate how many calories LMF Gold has from carbs? It's 10.5% fiber but I don't know if it's soluble or insoluble... if it was ALL soluble that'd be 1143 calories in 6#, so the total calories possible in 6# of LMF Gold is 5387. I feed two 6# feeds per day = 10,774 calories per day.
Is my math hopeless?
My horse is a hard keeper for a couple reasons: 1. He eats slowly, so gets less hay in pasture. 2. He's a TB - energetic, alert, not food motivated, always moving. 3. May have ulcers though he's had 2 months of omeprazole (enteric coated granules), plus a week of Ulcergard - no change. 4. They feed much less hay than he needs in pasture as most of the horses he lives with are porky little QHs and Morgans, and he's 16.2, thin-skinned and almost 20. 5. Teeth/deworming regularly attended to. CBC done and he's healthy. 6. Can't split feeds to more than 2x daily due to distance from barn/work schedule. Barn doesn't offer grain feeds to pastured horses at a cost effective rate ($10/feed).
He is at my trainer's now in a stall getting 5 flakes a day plus his usual 10-12# of LMF Gold and finally is putting on weight fast, which leads me to believe more forage and not more grain is the answer. He will be back out in pasture in March though.
