Why it pays to have horse feeding and feed stock in one place
In a small stable people feed “by eye” and check supplies with a glance into the hay loft. It works until the number of horses changes, until a seasonal helper arrives who doesn’t know who gets how much, or until the pellets run out on a day the shop is closed. In a larger stable feeding is logistics: dozens of rations a day, several kinds of feed and deliveries that have to be ordered ahead.
Horse feeding and feed stock are two sides of the same coin in iPalomino. In the stock you enter what you have. In the calendar you plan what is to be fed, to whom and when. And from these two pieces of data the app works out everything else by itself — how much is used per day, how long the stock will last and when you will need to order.
You don’t have to fill in any of it from memory. You don’t enter daily consumption; it arises from the feeding plan. And you don’t adjust the stock level by hand after every feeding — you just confirm the feeding.
Feed stock: keeping track of hay, oats, pellets and supplements
Every item in the feed stock has a few simple details:
- Name — whatever you call the feed: Meadow hay, Oats, Pellets, Foal muesli, Mineral feed.
- Unit — kilogram, bag, bale, litre or piece. You count round hay in bales, oats in kilos.
- Quantity — how much you are adding to stock right now.
- Price per unit — the app uses it to calculate feeding costs.
When you buy more feed, you don’t have to look for the old item and recalculate. You enter a new feed with the same name and unit, and the app adds the quantity to what is already in stock — before saving, it shows you how much there will be altogether.
Each feed has its own card on screen with a silo showing how full the stock is, the text “lasts roughly this many days” and a label when the stock is running low or used up.
Feeding plan: a horse’s feed ration in the calendar
You add a feeding in the calendar just like a task or an appointment. The form takes you from the feed all the way to the repeat:
- Choose a feed from stockIn the list each feed shows in brackets how much of it you have: “Pellets (26 kg)”. You know straight away what you can count on.
- Enter the amount for the whole feedingYou enter how much feed leaves the stock in total, not the ration per animal — a bale of hay for the whole stable is entered as 1. The unit is taken from the feed. For kilos and litres you can switch to grams or millilitres, so you enter 50 g of minerals as 50.
- Select who the feeding is forOne horse, several horses or the whole stable. The app immediately shows how much this feeding takes from the stock and how much will be left.
- Set the time and the repeatEvery day, every two to six days, every week, every two or three weeks or every month.
- Confirm what has been fedAfter feeding you confirm it in the calendar. The feed is deducted from stock and the next feeding is scheduled.
While still in the form you see how much feed will be left after this feeding and, for a repeating feeding, how many days the stock will last on such a plan. If there isn’t enough feed, the app says so at once: “Not enough in stock — 4 kg short.”
How long supplies of hay and feed will last
Try it with your own numbers. Set how much feed you have, how many horses you feed and what ration they get. The chart shows how the stock will run down, when it will be used up and from when the app would mark it as running low:
The calculator assumes an even daily ration. In the app the calculation is based on your actual feeding plan in the calendar, so it also takes into account feedings that repeat once every few days.
Who feeding and feed stock help
Horse owners
Even with one horse it is nice to know that the hay will last until the end of the month and the pellets need ordering next week. And if someone else feeds your horse, they have the feed ration in black and white — also after scanning the QR code on the stall.
Farms and breeders
On a farm different species are fed with different feeds. The feed stock holds them all, and the feeding plan divides what goes to the horses, what to the cows and what to the goats. You can plan purchases by numbers, not by feeling.
Ranches and stables with a team
In a stable with dozens of horses a feed inventory is a matter of money. You see where the feed disappears to, what is running low and what you have in surplus. The groom confirms the feedings and the stock is current without stocktaking.
Professionals: farrier, vet, trainer
A nutrition adviser or vet sees what the horse actually gets — not what the owner thinks it gets. When the feed ration is adjusted after a hay analysis, the change shows up everywhere at once.
The most common mistakes in feeding horses and storing feed
Feeding horses is a routine, and that is exactly why mistakes in it persist for so long. These recur most often:
- Rations “by eye”. A scoop is not a set of scales, and everyone fills it differently. A feed ration written in kilograms is the same for everyone who feeds.
- The feed ration in one person’s head. When they fall ill or leave, nobody knows what each horse gets. The whole team sees the feeding plan, also on the stall card.
- The stock is checked only when it is empty. The last bag of oats on a Friday evening is a classic. The app knows how many days the stock will last and marks the feed as running low five days ahead.
- The same feed kept twice. Two lines for the same hay mean two wrong numbers. When you add a feed you already have to stock, the quantity is added to the existing one.
- A change of ration the team doesn’t know about. The vet recommends less concentrate, yet the groom feeds as before. Everyone sees a change in the feeding plan immediately.
When horse feeding is planned and the feed stock deducts itself, you gain one more thing: precise feed consumption and horse feeding costs without a single manual calculation.
Stock charts and feed costs
Below the list of feeds you will find overviews that turn the stock into a decision-making tool. The “How long supplies will last” chart ranks the feeds by which will run out first. The monthly cost chart shows what costs you most, and the cost breakdown reveals where the feeding money really goes.
The Consumption section goes even further and converts the feeding plan into a day, three, six and twelve months, including how much feed needs to be bought. It is described in detail in the article feed consumption and horse feeding costs.
When the stock will last only five more days, the feed gets the “Running low” label, and you also see the number of such feeds on the home screen. And each horse’s current feed ration is also shown on the stall QR code.
The stable has six horses and each gets 1.5 kg of oats in the morning. The owner has 180 kg in stock. She plans the feeding “Oats, 9 kg for six horses, every day at 7:30”.
Every morning the groom confirms the feeding and nine kilos leave the stock. The app shows that the stock will last twenty days. Fifteen days later the oats get the “Running low” label — the owner has five days to order. Nobody calculated anything and nobody stood over an empty bag.
Frequently asked questions
Do I have to adjust the stock level by hand after every feeding?
No. You confirm the feeding in the calendar and the app deducts the amount fed from stock by itself. If you undo the confirmation, the feed returns to stock.
How does the app know how many days the feed will last?
From the feeding plan in the calendar it calculates the daily consumption of each feed and divides the remaining stock by it. You never enter daily consumption by hand.
Can one feeding be planned for several horses at once?
Yes. You select several horses or the whole stable and enter the amount for the whole feeding — for example 9 kg of oats for six horses or one bale of hay for the whole stable. Exactly that much leaves the stock.
What if there isn’t enough feed in stock?
The app warns you already when planning, at the feeding in the calendar and on confirmation. You can confirm the feeding anyway — the stock drops to zero and the feed is marked as used up.
In which units is feed recorded?
In kilograms, bags, bales, litres or pieces. For kilograms and litres you can also enter the ration in grams and millilitres.
Related features of the iPalomino app
These articles also belong with feeding and feed stock:
Your whole ranch in one pocket.
iPalomino is now on the App Store. Download the app and try it in your own stable. An Android version is in development.