How to feed beet pulp shreds?

No, you're not missing anything, AG. Horses have to LEARN to eat beet pulp, because it's an acquired TASTE. Try mixing a portion of the soaked beet pulp with your horse's regular grain, taking care to thoroughly mix the two so that he can't avoid eating at least some pulp with his regular food. That's what we do with our horses which are persnickety about eating the pulp, or who ( like one of our geldings) like to eat the grain out and leave the pulp. And get the pulp that has molasses mixed with the shreds for flavor, so your older horse will be more likely to eat it. Plain beet pulp without molasses is rather unappetizing to horses- it can be compared to your eating bland oatmeal without any flavoring. You'll get tired of that pretty quickly, and start ignoring it. It's the same with horses. I personally don't know many people who like oatmeal plain, without some sort of flavor from something. It's like eating wallpaper paste, especially if it happens to be thick. Horses are like that when it comes to things like beet pulp and bran- they have to learn to like and accept it. My next door neighbor just got a young horse a month or so ago that she's thinking of giving beet pulp to- and I've told her the same thing I just told you, based on my experience with feeding it to our horses. Her new horse is going to have to learn to like it.

We feed a textured grain to our horses which is made by Southern States. It's called Triple 10- and it takes its name from the fact that it has 10% each of protein, fat, and fiber. While it does have some molasses in it, it's not overly sweet, nor is it sticky- it's much more of a dry, textured type of feed. It also contains beet pulp as an ingredient, in addition to oats, corn, and various other grain based products. When our oldest horse ( whom we lost to complications of EPM in late summer of 2015) was still living, we fed him Triple Crown Senior mixed with the Triple 10, and of course, the beet pulp twice every day. He did very well on that, held his weight really well, even in the dead of the winter- and it gets cold up here in Delaware, where I live. ( We're expecting a major winter storm over the next 48 hours, in fact.) Our current horses range in age from early 20's to our youngest, who's about 11 this year. They all get beet pulp twice a day with their grain, and they live out 24/7, unless there's a bad storm or a lot of extreme cold or something. They're all in good weight right now, and nobody's been sick or anything this winter. Beet pulp is really USEFUL feed for keeping weight on hard keepers. But the best bonus is that it's also a "cool" feed which doesn't make horses "hot" and hard to ride or train. Adding something like Triple 10 also helps to promote calm behavior, because it has ingredients in it that don't cause sugar spikes in the horse's system. And like all of Southern States' feeds, the Triple10 is formulated with ingredients which help to reduce the risk of colic and founder, the two biggest killers of domesticated horses. Perhaps your older horse might benefit from eating something like this, or from being on Triple Crown Senior, which is what we fed to our oldest horse. Check with your vet and see what he or she says about it. Meanwhile, you don't have to use hot water to soak beet pulp. We never do this- we just water from the hose or the faucet at the barn. Lately, I've been dumping water from the buckets that we didn't use during the last storm we had into the beet pulp bucket, so as to keep the water buckets from getting all full of crud. But you can use water at any temperature.You'll find that adding beet pulp is also a wonderful way to get extra water into your horse's system, too. That's one of the things we use it for in the winter, in fact. By adding powdered, trace mineralized salt to it, we can make sure the horses drink enough to stay healthy when it's cold out.

PS: I'm not sure, but I think that Sure Start is made by the same people who make Calf-Manna.

Alfalfa? beet pulp needs to be made into a mash by adding hot water and letting it hydrate