Soaking mash in advance

[KurtansCurtain]

I’ve recently got my first pony who arrived in very poor condition. He’s pretty anxious around his meal times and hates it when other horses are fed before him. I’ve got him on DIY and one of the other liveries who gets there before me has offered to put his feed in for him at the same time she feeds the others, but I would have to mix it up. One of the feeds he’s on is half a scoop of feed, 1.5 scoops of water and then needs to be soaked for 3 minutes (care & gain), then I add a scoop of chaff, half a scoop of high fibre nut and a handful of balancer. Then I normally add loads more water to make it quite sloppy and give it to him. The care & gain has sugar beet in it.

could I mix this all up the way I would do it, including soaking it, at about 6pm for the other livery to feed at around 6.45-7am? As a novice owner I’m not sure whether this is ok or not. I’ve read that bacteria starts to grow after 12 hours? The other option I suppose would be to put it all in a bucket dry and ask her to add water in the morning - but then my worry would be not adding enough water. I also don’t want to put her out by making it too complicated when she’s doing me a favour.

otherwise my horse will have to get used to waiting till I arrive and can feed him!

Usually I would say yes no problem but that’s a big feed and you would be better splitting into 2 smaller meals, small and often is the optimum way to feed. I would therefore leave some chaff and nuts out to be given as first breakfast so your horse is fed with others and then give the rest as a top up when you arrive

Oh that’s a good idea - I’m not far behind her arriving, I generally get there by 7-7.15 I just think he’s been deprived of food so he finds it upsetting not being fed and he’s usually pacing his stable when I get there.

hadnt actually thought of doing that so thank you!

You can leave it for up to 24 hours unless it's really hot weather. 12 hours overnight is no problem.

It's usually better to soak for longer than 3 mins anyway. Half an hour even for the super fast soaking mashes is better.

Or you could leave out a small feed eg some nuts or chaff or slice of hay that the other liveries could put in - that will keep him happy until you arrive.

Ah that’s good to know - he never runs out of hay he’s always got two massive haynets - when it’s feed time nothing else will do!

I did start putting some chaff and nuts out and the other girl fed him that for me which sorted the issue - he’s just switched over to overnight turnout though which means the issue went away on its own because he gets fed when I bring him in. It seems like such an obvious solution but my brain just didn’t get there by itself!

it’s useful to know I should soak it for longer I’ll do that in future - thanks!