However, I have came against a bit of a conundrum.

I have an older horse that, along with his super-sweet all-grain horse feed, I give him a 50:50 mix of Beet Pulp Pellets and Alfalfa Pellets, which I soak in about three times as much water as pellets for at least an hour prior to feeding.

A half-gallon of pellets will swell up over the top of a two-gallon bucket.

It has always been my consensus that it is better for the pellets to swell up in the bucket than inside the horse.

Yet, on every bag of pellets, Beet or Alfalfa, regardless of brand, soaking is never mentioned and the feeding instructions assume feeding the pellets dry.

Now, here is my conundrum; we have had several consecutive days that haven't gotten above freezing with every night in the single digits(American).

He can't eat his water-soaked pellets quick enough before they freeze solid, only getting about 25% eaten before the rest turns to solid ice.

If you are a horse feeder person with experience feeding Alfalfa and Beet pellets, what are your thoughts if I were to feed the pellets dry instead of soaked during these cold spells ?

I don't have the luxury of "tapering him in" or gradually introducing the changeover.

Maybe if I start by giving him half as many pellets dry as I have been feeding soaked ?

He always has the absolute best Great Bend Kansas Alfalfa Hay available free-choice; but, like an old back-row church-goer chewing Mammoth Cave Twist, he just sort of chews it up and sucks the juice out of it and then leaves the chewed up remnants all over the place without actually ever swallowing it.

   A bombed horse with a bad liver!!!

So that would leave you with finding a way to heat his "china", or mixing and serving his dinner in smaller batches over a period of time. If he is a good old friend, he is worth making the time.

Hope the weather breaks for ya soon, can't imagine how it must be to be that cold!

To everyone = lots of good ideas here and I appreciate them.

My approach to my dilemma will probably incorporate parts of all these ideas. 

Thanks for enlightening me; I might never have came to that line of reasoning all by my lonesome; it makes sense to me.
 

Sad as it is to say, he is the only friend I've got.

He has tried his best to kill me dead on a number of occasions.

Twice he has rolled completely over me, managing to step on and kick me hard during the process; but, I stayed in the leather both times and was still aboard when he came back to his feet --- and this with a Big Iron on my hip and a rifle in the boot.

Putting a set of shoes on him is a four day process; one shoe each long day.

If he don't want to be caught, fifteen Red Indians and a pack of Blue Heeler dogs couldn't catch him.

Woodrow Calls white horse is gentle as a lamb in comparison.

He is as slick and fat as a preacher's wife and looks like he stepped off the cover of the Quarter Horse Journal.

He and I have an accord that defies understanding; I don't trust him and he don't trust me but we get along and either would be lost without the other.

The funny thing is, there is this little 10-yr-old girl who has been coming around here since she was in diapers; and, from day one, she can get away with things around him that would get me killed; she trusts him and he watches over her.

As broke as I am, I wouldn't take a million bucks for him on that account alone.

As for heating the feed bucket, the wife came in with a pair of cordless hand-warmers that, on High, get hotter than a branding iron and last all day on a charge.

I have been thinking about maybe putting them in some sort of sleeve or maybe just a ziploc bag and putting them in the bottom of the bucket and see how that works; one thing for sure, I wouldn't worry about him getting lextrocuted like I would with one of those corded buckets.

Now there's an idea...

Our weather is very intermittent and highly unpredictable and it never gets cold before raining fiercely nonstop  for several days, preventing anyone from preparing for the cold that is coming and then freezing everything tight.

We usually get at least two 3-week periods where it never gets above freezing mixed with several episodes where it is 72°American at 4:PM and 12° at 4:AM and year round constant heinous humidity that would strangle a fish.

Now this is an idea. Coupled with the cordless hand warmers this could be your winner.

Plenty of electricity.

I am a bit leery of corded buckets and floating water heaters, especially around livestock; there have been a few barns burnt and livestock electrocuted on account of those.

If more than one animal is penned where the first one gets electrocuted, each successive animal that gives the dead one a sniff gets it too.

The lazy man in me wants to take a chance with the corded buckets but the cautious man in me learns from others misery.

He ain't a gonna take care of any horse of mine...

With a bit different climate here , we grow grain hay with the grain in the dough when making horse hay. Unless your working the horse on a plow all day every day just about all any horse needs.

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Use a small igloo insulated lunchbox or medium cooler the size of your feed bucket. Remove the handle and lid and make a pocket on the bottom side you can securely retain the pocket warmer.

Use warmer water to soak the feed, half as much water as normal when cold, so it's damp not wet like porridge.

We had a cow when I was a kid with a bad tooth that didn't like cold water. Had to drink slow.

Sweet feed has cavity causing sugar. Vet/dentist might look at it sometime.

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The horse will tell you what he likes to eat.

We had a pony who somehow wrapped the same front hoof in his rope, held it up in the air, and called to you to notice he "needed help" and "by the way I need to be moved to better grass to eat". He'd tell us he didn't like the current fare.

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Somebody seeking information about feeding Alfalfa Pellets is going to sooner or later stumble across this thread so I will put my own personal experiences as to what they will and absolutely will not eat.

What my horses will eat and eat every crumb, wet or dry, is Summit Brand from Huron of Ontario Canada; after soaking, it is a very appealing bright green color.

What they will not eat unless I mix them one part to eight with the good Summit pellets is Standlee and Dumor brands; after soaking, either one straight will be sort of a brown color and I have had no luck getting them to eat either, no matter how many days nor how hungry they get.

The Dumor used to be a lot better than the last several bags I have tried.

In all the many horses in all the many years, I have not had one yet that would do anything with Orchard Grass except for pull it out of the manger and tromp in into the mud without ever eating a sprig.

In all the many years of feeding the best Alfalfa I could find I have never experienced any of the problems that I see mentioned so often.

In my opinion, more horses have died from the lack of plenty of good Alfalfa than have ever died from too much of it.

For several years, it has been the thing around here for cattle farmers to get an old used crude-oil tank and contract one of the "slop haulers" to keep it filled with distiller's mash = the waste product after the whiskey has been drained off.

This stuff is a bright orange in color and very syrupy; you just run it out in a big trough and they poke their noses in it and drink it up; livestock that have been eating it for long will start turning orange --- no kidding; when they evacuate their guts, it is like orange water from a fire hose.

I know a guy who trades in horses and cattle and his horses run with the cattle and eat this stuff by the gallons; he has been doing it for years and if he ever had a horse to die from it I never knew about it.

But, from what I hear, the free ride is over as the distillers have discovered a process and added equipment that will turn this slop into some sort of alcohol that can be burned in cars.

This new change will put dozens of tanker-trucks and drivers out of a job and put hundreds of cattle farmers in the poor house ----- and probably ruin countless vehicle engines.