Saddle Pads and Sweet Feed

good morning duane here dry creek wrangler school um going to do another video today i want to make a video on saddle pads and sweet feed um so uh if you see a little extra twinkle in my eye today it's as of the filming of this video on saturday the 14th i'm heading in this afternoon to pick up mama she stuck around for uh for a week after the new grand baby was born to make sure everybody was taken care of and everybody was healthy and then she bought her ticket she's headed home so kind of happy about that um and we got a crystal vengeance this morning it's a little bit stronger a little bit richer than what i normally do over morning but i was in the mood for one very strong very flavorful cigar but it's kind of like the part of this black label it's not for beginners you don't you don't want to do it uh if you're a newbie but it's a very good rich cigar so i want to talk about these two things this morning uh saddle pads and sweet feed in the same context okay so that context is money now i want to set the tone before i start here i am not telling anybody how you should spend your money uh anybody that spends as much money as i do on cigars has no right to tell somebody else you should buy this and you should not buy that when it comes to money that's that's not the heart that's not what we're doing here but there's things out there that are on the market that people are selling that are not strictly necessary and so what i want to do is just let you have some information that you can make some choices logically and reasonably i'll let my cigar go out and the first thing we want to talk about is saddle pads and i've gotten a lot of questions about this uh from viewers from subscribers they want to know what i use and they want recommendations and i've mentioned it in a couple videos i use um these diamond wool saddle pads all right they're made in i think or they're made in usa i think they're made in rhode island um and that's what i use and i've been using them for years now as i've mentioned on here before i have i have no what do they call them i have no sponsors okay nobody i've had a couple three emails people wanting me to sponsor a product to get on here and uh and uh give a what i think of it but i don't use the product i wouldn't use the product and so to me it was adonis and so i i thanked him and said no so i i have no spot this is a product i use um and i combine we have big r here in colorado which is kind of like if you're back east like a like a tractor supply and i bought this particular saddle pad at big r for i think was 55 i've been using them for years and i ride hard in two days this week me and another fellow works on this ranch have been up looking for strays up in the mountains and we put in we figured between 40 and 50 miles in two days in the mountains hard riding this is what i used when i was wrangling when i was packing this is what i used a 55 dollar sometimes i've got one that's one inch this is three quarter or one inch but it's all i use now and there's no wear leathers okay it's just a wool pad now let's think about this all right with the taglines of this channel is be logical and be reasonable now let's be logical and be reasonable let's let's stop and think for a minute okay how much padding can you do how much padding is enough padding for anything all right let's say you put you need padding you put insoles in your shoes okay now if you put enough insole in your shoes let's say you put a i i use wool insole in my shoes in the winter time gets me a little bit up off the ground now if i wear a size 11 boot and it's stretched out just a little bit and i put a wool insole about that big in my boot and it does the job it separates me from the ground my foot doesn't feel the ground through the sole of my boot i'm padded right now if i buy a boot that's too big that size 12 and i put twice or three times the padding okay it's silly but the illustration follow me along here insole in my boot am i more padded no i'm not if with a thin insole i can't feel the ground with a thicker insole i can't feel the ground and with the even more thick insole i can't feel the ground what have i gained when i reach the point where i am thoroughly fully padded from the ground then after that i get into the area of diminished returns i spend more money i get more bulk i get less contact and i have no more padding saddle pads are the same way for years the our us calvary they used a wool blanket the original cowboy saddles did not have shearling on them and they used wool if you go to a museum um like an old west museum like you go to the bill cody museum uh out the uh buffalo bill museum out of cody wyoming and you look at some of the old saddles they started sewing wool to the skirts of the saddles this shearling that is that we have in our saddles today that's a fairly recent invention and we have gotten to the point today where it's a case of like everything else it's a mar it's a market driven deal if we build it if we make it somebody will buy it um but for a purely uh utilitarian standpoint it's not necessary now you can use what you want i mean you can buy what you can afford and if you like it um that's perfectly fine um but you take a 55 saddle pad like this and then you start adding stuff to it why because if you build it they will come if you sell it they will buy it now you take wear leathers let's think about wear leathers all right now let's really stop and be logical okay i've put a kajillion miles on saddle pads i've never had a saddle pad wear out where those wear leathers are you ever seen it have you ever seen a saddle pad or saddle blanket actually that did not have the wear leathers wear out in that spot i never have now you might have but i never have so what's the point they look cool they do look cool and if you've got one and you like it man cool is great there's nothing wrong with looking cool buy it but the point is you take a saddle pad that perfectly does the job and you take well let's see they buy this stuff this leather they buy it by full size and they buy a wholesale um and then they cut pieces out and use the pieces so let's say you've got eight dollars worth of leather maybe let's be generous maybe there's ten dollars not but maybe there's ten dollars worth of leather on that saddle pad and then you gotta pay somebody to sew it on which is probably runs through a machine but somebody has to run the machine you got to pay them well if they do them paid by the piece it's not that much so let's be really really generous and let's say it cost them twenty dollars to put those little wear leathers on that saddle blanket how much extra do they charge for saddle blanket with wear leathers than for one without it and how much do the wear leathers actually help they don't if a three-quarter inch wool blanket for fifty five dollars completely pads your horse from your saddle then a three hundred dollars blanket that's that thick and full of shearling lining and full of stuff inside what do you gain you don't gain anything i've got a couple of sons that that ride and for years they've just used blanket like a navajo blanket just folded in half and that's all they use we don't soar horses we don't have any trouble with that knowing that but we have our saddle is down fit close better on a horse we have more contact with the horse it's not necessary it's perfectly fine if you want to do it but my recommendation is just for the sake of money talk here all right just for numbers the numbers whatever my recommendation is if you have a thousand dollar budget for a saddle and a and a saddle pad all right you're getting started and you've got a thousand dollar budget my recommendation is to spend fifty five dollars on a saddle pad and nine hundred and forty five dollars on a saddle the more expensive saddle the better saddles much much more important than the expensive saddle pad all right instead of spending buying a 700 side on a 300 saddle pad saddle blanket combo all right uh take the extra money and put it on on good leather now sometimes on on on these um they work just like they are sometimes i will take a blanket just a thin blanket because my saddle is a full quarter horse bar saddle and sometimes if i'm on a younger smaller horse and the saddle's just a little bit the fit is just not a little bit as much as i'd like i'll take a thin blanket and add to this uh just to kind of fill it out just a little bit so the fit is better but if you've got a big giant thick 400 saddle pad 300 saddle pad um where do you go from there where do you meet that law of diminished returns okay so this is just this is a little bit of info it's not necessary um i'm not bragging i'm just speaking realistically there's probably a small percentage of people watching this video on this channel who ride more miles and more hours in the saddle than i do over rougher country i know they're out there but it's there's probably not a whole lot um and so i'm speaking from experience that it's not necessary now again we buy things that are not strictly necessary and if you can afford it and you like it bless your heart good and go but if you're new and you're just starting out and starting out with horses is expensive uh and you're trying to look for ways to better utilize your finances then that's one area uh where you can take the money from here and better utilize it over here and your horse will be just fine okay the saddle blanket or saddle pad does not make or break your horse the quality of your saddle does if you've got a really good saddle that fits really good you can take a wool army blanket fold it in half and put it on because it's what they did for years and put your saddle on and your horse is going to be just fine okay so i wanted to i wanted to cover that the other thing is sweet feet now i don't want to step on anybody's toes here okay i don't i don't uh i don't want to uh don't want to ruffle any feathers the horse world is is can be one of the most joining worlds but at the same time it can be one of the most divisive worlds and people are very very opinionated uh about about things so i'm just going to give you my experience my side of it um and let me just say right off the bat it does not matter let's just put it right out there it does not matter how old a horse i have it does not matter how hard a horse i'm working it does not matter if it's cold or super hot it does not matter if the horse needs weight put on it it does i do not ever use sweet feet i will not buy it and i will not give it to my horse regardless okay sweet feet what makes sweet feed sweet a molasses by-product which is what it's sugar okay it's sugar uh and why do they do it well they say some people say well my horse likes it well that's like your kid won't eat a good breakfast and so you take a bowl of sugar and turn it upside down over his eggs and bacon and everything well he eat if it's covered in sugar yeah and you're going to pay the price in a little bit that little rascal get wound up get turned on and get to rolling and and you're gonna have your hands full well that's the exact same idea of sweet feet well my horse won't eat uh feed uh so we gotta buy sweet feet stubble mice is the way to eat it not a good logic not a good plan um but the main reason they do it because it's cheap when you buy a 50 pound bag of feed you expect 50 pounds well molasses byproduct is cheaper than corn it's cheaper than oats it's cheaper than barley so they will take molasses and they'll add molasses to it to add to the weight and what you wind up with is a horse with a sugar rush for one thing and and another thing you'll wind up with is more flies all that molasses is not digested fully when horse apples come out the other end of the horse and you know what else loves all that molasses and stuff and the flies uh i have seen it time and time again you stop feeding cheap sweet feed to your horse your fly problem will diminish it will go down okay now let's talk about feed because maybe we need an alternative and maybe we don't so feeding your horse your horse's diet uh i'm going to really oversimplify here but i'm gonna i'm go i'm going to uh lay it out where we can all understand it and i'm not a vet i'm not a scientist i'm not a nutritionist i have owned a saddle tack and feed store i've sold a lot of feed i do know something about feed okay so this is an oversimplification but let me help you with it like this okay fat if you look on the back on that little white tag on your feed bag it says there's so much percentage of protein so much percentage of fat so much percentage of all this fat builds fat protein builds muscle if what's getting the protein is working all right so but so many times we get a horse that is a little lean uh needs a little bit of weight put on and so we'll go and we'll get a higher protein feed one of the things that when people come to me and say dwayne i've got a problem a horse my horse is acting up i'm having all this trouble with the way my horse is behaving the first thing i ask always is what are you feeding them because usually the feed is the problem my wife worked in the in the public school system for about a year and some of the kids that were extremely poorly behaved they were little kids you know like kindergarten through fourth grade she was a para educator um she would go in the cafeteria they would feed them breakfast and and they would give these kids chocolate milk and doughnuts for breakfast uh before sentiment in the classroom to do work and the kids were poorly behaved a lot of times your horse is poorly behaved because of its diet so mama let me ask you this okay let me let me ask you let's stop and let's be logical and be reasonable okay so you're going to the grocery store and you're shopping for the the week supply groceries so you're pushing your cart down to the grocery store and you say well i'm gonna get milk okay why are you gonna get milk well because it's got calcium and we're gonna have cereal and the kid you know we need milk for cereal we need this okay so you have a reason and i'm gonna pick up two loaves of bread why are you getting the bread well for toast for making sandwiches for this okay well it's logical and reasonable i'm gonna get eggs all right and then you swing through the pharmacy section and you get a big old tub of protein powder for making shakes for bodybuilders and say why are you getting that i don't know i'm getting a tub of protein are you uh are you working out are you lifting weights no are you bodybuilding no are are you playing football are you trying to build muscle mass no i'm not then why are you buying excessive protein it's the exact same thing with your horse if your horse is not working hard regular and you're not deliberately trying to build muscle mass on your horse why are you feeding it excess protein and this goes to alfalfa too i don't feed my horse's alfalfa i'm not anti-alfalfa and alfalfa has a place and a purpose what i am is is i'm anti-illogical i'm anti-throwing the money way without reason without purpose and without knowing why so dwayne how should i feed my horse well optimum the horse's digestive system is designed to have forage grass or hay moving through the system all the time in nature in the best system a horse grazes most of the day because it always has grazing grass going through its system that's optimum and so a horse that's on pasture that's optimum that's the best okay so let's set aside grain let's set aside flakes of alfalfa let's set all that aside all right a regular horse a normal average healthy horse all it needs is grass all right it just needs pasture now usually a lot of people cannot pasture the horses you say dwayne i have to feed her the colts are coming back in um dwayna i have to feed hay okay and i know we have jobs and we have schedules and we have life and we do the best we can i understand that but free choice hey is for the horse's um health both physically and emotionally the ulcers for the stomach the best is free choice hay now we can't all do that that's expensive and we don't always have the the schedule but it's it's the best again they have the hay they have the forage always moving through the system and they have something to do okay you you if if if you only feed a horse well my horse needs this much because of the size of my horse and what the horse is doing the percentage of my horse needs this many pounds of hay a day if you go out first thing in the morning and you throw that much hay out and they eat it all up and they stand in a dry lot then the rest of the day they have nothing to do that stuff goes through the system and it but it's not optimal it's not the way they're designed it doesn't keep going if you can feed them half of that in the morning and half at night is twice as good it's better for them okay uh but um a good average healthy horse if they have plenty of grass or good hay that's all they need they don't need grain now if a horse is working really hard and they're starting to drop off a little bit they don't have the energy at the end of the day and you want to start feeding them grain then we have other options and there's a thousand options and it's hard for me to sit here and tell you but it an economical um alternative to sweet feed is cobb all right now if i need an economical grain for something that needs a little bit of boost going along i'll buy bags of cob cobb is an acronym it stands for corn oats and barley and when you open up the bag you look in it and that's what you see corn oats and barley it's not there's no brown there's no red there's no molasses in it no sugar okay um now sometimes you know you you need if you're got a performing horse or something um and you need a bit more you know that's free that's for you to decide okay that's for you to figure out maybe you need to talk to your vet let your vet help you work out a nutritional balance for your horse uh but there's no vet worth his salt gonna tell you to go get a bunch of molasses and feed it to your horse all right uh i had a guy come in the shop i own that feed store several years ago and i lost my shirt in that feed store i told them about that last video i did about getting bucked off yeah i knew horses i knew feeding a new saddles but i i did not know business um and uh but i had a guy come in one day and he said man you you gotta help me and i said okay what's the problem he said i my grandfather died and i got his mule he logged with his mule and he plowed his garden with his mule this was in tennessee and he said and i got his mule and uh i think that meal is going to kill me and so he i said what's he doing he said well he's in a lot out behind the barn and he's he's pawing and digging holes he's pushing against the fence and and he's just all when i'm afraid to go out anymore he's just so jacked up and uh so i asked him i said the first thing i asked everybody what are you feeding him and he said i'm feeding him 16 sweet uh sweet feed and hey and this was a 16-hand mule that had been working hard and uh so i said you're not working this meal no i'm i just inherited him i said are you riding the mule no i'm not riding the mule the mule's just standing in the lot and i said and you're feeding him 16 sweet feet he's like yeah i said buddy my recommendation to you is either take a gun and pull it to your head and pull the trigger uh because that's going to be the fastest and quickest easiest most less painful way for you to die or to change how you're feeding that mule and i said it's you're killing the mule and the mule's going to kill you i said you got hey he said i got hey i said to put a big round bell of hay out there make sure he's got clean fresh water all the time leave him alone and he'll settle down and he did and he did when you feed a horse a lot of protein and they're not working that turns into energy it's not going to build muscles it just turns into jacked up energy all right and a lighter wallet so here's a couple areas um that might help you now this is just this is just a a taste of a different way of thinking about what you're doing you your horse your finances your situation your writing all of that's yours i cannot tell you what you have to do the thing for you to do it's just here's a bit of information for you to take and add it to all them from other information that i assume and i hope you're getting from studying from learning the brain is a muscle you stop working it it stops growing okay so i hope you're always studying always learning um if you've got a horse that is you need to put weight on the horse there are feeds out there that instead of 16 protein and three percent fat they'll have eight or ten percent fat and three to five percent protein uh look at some of your senior feeds okay uh senior feeds are good for putting weight on a horse you don't have to be an old horse to have seen your feet there's some horses that are like some people they just can't gain weight they come out of the winter hard and they need some extra i understand that and that's fine but start reading the tag and start approaching this logically you want fat if your horse needs fat feed them fat okay more fat less protein and uh and maybe you can start going down a path that's one of them easier and better for you and for your horse okay so i hope that helps you um if it does then uh click on like leave a comment uh if if you've got somebody who's going through this struggle um maybe you'll share this with them subscribe if you haven't hit that bell so you'll be notified and uh and uh hopefully hopefully this this will do you some good be logical be reasonable be informed okay and then then start having fun and we'll catch you next time this doggone clicker i can't ever make this thing work

Channel: Dry Creek Wrangler School

Views: 21,481

Rating: 4.9729729 out of 5

Keywords: Saddle, Sweet feed, Molasses, Grass, Hay, Horse Diet, Saving money, Horse blanket, Saddle blanket, Saddle pad, Horse pad, Horse saddle

Id: jICamr2IlkY

Length: 28min 58sec (1738 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 14 2021