After talking with Rick several times about the possible purchase of FeedingMasters for his Friesian horses, Rick purchased no fewer than three FeedingMasters for his horses. We received this extensive review from Rick. We wish Rick and his beautiful Frisian horses a lot of fun with the FeedingMasters.
January 2021, FeedingMaster review by Rick van der Reijd
Frisian horses are my passion and I am the proud owner of three beautiful Frisian horses. I have a 12 year old mare, a 2.5 year old foal and a 6 year old star gelding. In the summer I have the horses in the meadow from early in the morning until late in the evening, but in winter this is a lot more difficult on the Groningen clay.
I have been looking around for a good solution for feeding my horses for a long time. During the day I work and I always make sure that someone feeds the horses twice while I am working, but this was not the solution for me. My gelding is prone to colic because he is a glutton. So what you feed also goes well with straw if necessary and it has happened to me three times now that he has developed severe colic as a result, which is of course a disaster as a horse lover if your horse has it. In my search for a feeding system, hanging a hay net often comes up, but I am not really in favor of this due to bad experiences with this. I wanted something where I could see exactly what I feed the horse per day and what is distributed over 24 hours.
Purchase FeedingMaster
I then came across the FeedingMaster system and contacted Valetudo Horse Products about my search for a good feeding system and whether this system was suitable for me. After receiving a fantastic clear explanation with good facts, I started thinking about it. I wanted to have a system for all three horses, so it is a major investment. I'm a technician at university, so I'm quite picky, so I was really full of questions about the technology of the feeding system and its robustness. I don't know anyone who has a feeding system, so asking is difficult and in Groningen it is a bit like what the farmer doesn't know, he doesn't eat. After asking many questions and receiving good and clear answers to all questions, I was convinced and purchased the systems.
FeedingMaster: my experiences
The FeedingMasters have now been running in my stables for almost six months and after this period I would like to share my experiences with you. First of all (and I want to knock this off) my gelding has no longer had colic. The system works excellently and it is really easy to dose how much feed you want to give the horse per day. My horses are a lot calmer and no longer eat straw because they are offered hay within 24 hours. You can also get your horse to gain weight simply by changing the feeding times, but that does not mean that your horse will be without feed for a longer period of time. I would rather feed my gelding too often than have him get stuck in straw with all the consequences that entails, but the major disadvantage is that he gets too much food and therefore becomes fat. You do not have this problem with the Feedingmaster.
Personally I also have a lot more peace. I just know when I'm away that my horses have food and filling the troughs once a day doesn't take an hour. This gives me a lot of freedom and peace. What I now experience now that I have this system is that I can drive much more easily when I am free from work. Normally the horses are hungry around 5 to 6 o'clock in the evening and when you go riding then in my case they are more concerned with eating than with riding and it is of course bad to ride a horse on an empty stomach. You do not have this problem because the horse is offered food at all times, so you are not dependent on your feeding times when riding. I am also convinced that it will benefit the health of your horse, if you thoroughly study the functioning of a horse's stomach, there is a good chance that many horses have a stomach ulcer due to insufficient feeding and I think that With this system you can closely match the natural eating behavior of a horse.