SPILLERS Senior Super-Mash 20kg – Fast Soaking Mash for Senior Horses

SPILLERS Senior Super-Mash – 20kg

Senior Super-Mash is the feed for the veteran that can no longer manage hay. It soaks in about two minutes with one and a half times its volume of water, and Spillers state it can be fed as a total hay replacer — their own worked figure is 11.5kg dry weight a day for a 500kg horse that cannot eat hay or grass at all, split across a minimum of four meals.

The analysis is the gentlest of any compound feed in this listing: sugar 2.5%, starch 8%, fibre 20%, with no whole cereal grain and no molasses. Vitamin C at 300 mg/kg and vitamin E at 300 iu/kg go in for immune function, and there is live yeast with MOS and FOS prebiotics behind them.

Performance & Benefits

• Soaks in about two minutes with 1.5 times its volume of water.
• Can be fed as a partial or total hay replacer, which is what separates it from an ordinary mash.
• Sugar 2.5% and starch 8% — the lowest of any compound feed in this range.
• 20% fibre from soya hulls, beet pulp and treated straw.
• Vitamin C at 300 mg/kg and vitamin E at 300 iu/kg.
• Probiotic live yeast with prebiotics MOS and FOS.
• 12% protein to hold topline on a horse that can no longer chew forage.

Suitable For

• Senior horses and ponies, particularly those with poor or missing teeth.
• Horses quidding hay, or leaving it uneaten.
• Veterans that have lost topline and condition.
• Use as a partial or complete hay replacer, or alongside other feeds.
• Not a recovery feed for a fit competition horse — Spillers Perform & Restore Mash is formulated for that job.

Feeding

• Put the dry feed in a bucket, add 1.5 times its volume of water and leave for about two minutes until the water is taken up.
• 250kg pony in light work: 1.5kg dry weight daily. 500kg horse in light work: 3kg dry weight daily.
• 500kg horse unable to eat hay or grass at all: 11.5kg dry weight daily, split across a minimum of four meals.
• A large Stubbs scoop holds roughly 1.7kg dry.
• Make it up fresh each feed, and keep clean water available at all times.

Composition & Analysis

• Composition: soya (bean) hulls dehulled (genetically modified), oatfeed, dried unmolassed sugar beet pulp, wheatfeed, treated cereal straw (oat & wheat, sodium), rice bran, sunflower seed meal dehulled, calcium carbonate, salt, rapeseed oil, oligo-fructose (dried, 0.2%), yeast products (0.1%), with added vitamins, minerals, probiotic live yeast and prebiotics MOS and FOS.
• Typical analysis: digestible energy 11.0 MJ/kg, oil 4.5%, protein 12.0%, fibre 20.0%, starch 8.0%, sugar 2.5%.
• Vitamin A 10,000 iu/kg, vitamin D3 1,500 iu/kg, vitamin E 300 iu/kg, vitamin C 300 mg/kg.
• Selenium 0.30 mg/kg, copper 30.0 mg/kg, zinc 120.0 mg/kg.
• 20kg bag. BETA NOPS approved. Spillers publish no BETA laminitis approval mark for this feed, so none is claimed here; the sugar and starch figures above are their own.

Care & Caution

• Always soak it before feeding. A dry pelleted mash given straight from the bag is a choke risk, and an old horse with poor teeth is the animal least able to deal with one.
• At 11.5kg dry weight a day as a full hay replacer, the daily amount must be split across at least four meals. Feeding that volume in one or two buckets is a colic risk.
• A horse quidding or dropping weight needs its teeth checked. A mash keeps the calories going in; it does not fix the mouth.