Optimum growth is what we should shoot for in our horses, not maximum growth. In other words, we should not feed with an eye toward seeing how big we can possibly make a foal grow. The end result is usually a young horse that is, at best, obese, and more likely a ticking time bomb of future soundness issues.
The only "supplement" that my horses get is 2-1 Cattle mineral. Many forages, but especially oat hay and high percentage legume pastures, have a poor ratio of Calcium to Phosphorous. A simple fifty pound trace mineral block does not correct the problem. 2-1 mineral is expensive and my horses eat a lot of it, but it is essential to providing solid nutrition to horses that live on forage in my part of the country.
For horses that have trouble maintaining weight first I check for worms, then bad teeth, then sand, then I boost mineral consumption, and only then, if all else fails, do I look to radically increasing calories. Even then I seek to increase calories primarily though fat rather than carbohydrates.
My young horses often look rangy but around age 18 months they really begin to take on a a beautiful athletic build.
It is never good to equate "fat" with "healthy."
(Jacob is pictured above with Swimmer at Corolla Wild Horse Days last year. Jacob is a specularly conditioned teen athlete with nearly no body fat. No one would consider him malnourished...unless he was a horse. Many horse owners fail to recognize that a healthy horse, like a healthy teen athlete, is not coated in slabs of fat.)
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