I think the hardest thing I had understanding in the beginning was the "vocabulary":
Ration balancer:
It's a pelleted supplement for those who want to give their horse extra nutrients but feel they are getting the calories and fiber needed from pasture grass or hay. Purina's Ration Balancer is their "Enrich" products.
Middle Ground feed:
This pelleted feed has nutrients AND calories and is meant to a supplemental add on to a pasture/hay diet. Purina's products in this category include Strategy.
Complete feed:
This is a pelleted feed that provides ALL of the necessary nutrients, calories, etc. You would not need to add additional hay or pasture grass. Purina's complete feeds include Equine Jr., Equine Adult, Equine Sr.
Sweet feed:
Grain mixture coated with molasses that often includes additional vitamins and minerals. Purina's sweet feed products are all called Omolene. They have several variations depending on what your horse needs (i.e., Omolene 300 is for Mares and foals through weanlings).
There are dozens of other things you can add like beet pulp, weight supplements, flax seed, rice bran oil, soy oil, additional grains like oats, BOSS (sunflower seeds, I think!), etc.
Purina is just one BRAND of product. There are many other BRANDS that offer the same lines of product. To be clear, I do not work for Purina, but I use it so I'm familiar with their product line.
Some people don't even feed a "grain" or "feed" during summer/warm months. They opt to give only grass/pasture and/or hay. Then they add a grain/feed during the colder months of the year. Some people build their own feed out...from the bottom up, so to speak. They want to have complete control over every ingredient going into their horses' bodies.
I like to keep things simple, especially as this is all very new to me. So, I have my easy keepers on Strategy and my hard keeper on the Omolene/Amplify combination. She gets an additional weight supplement that includes a probiotic. The easy keepers get a straight dose of probiotic once a day. It took us more than a year to come to this current plan! Keep researching...trust your instincts....you will get there in time!
ETA: Generally speaking, any thing that is *pelleted* feed is going to "keep" for an extended period of time. Think of it like a box of cereal with dried fruit like strawberries or bananas. That fruit won't "go bad" because it's been dried. But you wouldn't be able to say the same thing for a fresh strawberry or banana. It can eventually go stale, but not go "bad".
