Instructions
Buy the best sweet feed you can afford from a local feed dealer. This is especially important with sweet feed, as molasses can be used to disguise low-grade ingredients and some poor-quality sweet feeds contain less nutrition. Better feed brands are usually separated into multiple mixes (senior, maintenance, junior horse), and Karen Briggs recommends in her article "Buying Prepared Horse Feed" that you examine the nutritional profile on the back of the bag to be sure that the feed remains the same from bag to bag.
Determine how much sweet feed your horse should be eating by the time the introduction period is completed. Consult the feeding instructions on the bag, which should give the pounds your horse should be eating based on his weight. These feeding instructions vary between manufacturers and even among a manufacturer's different recipes.
Subtract 25 percent of your horse's current ration and add 25 percent of the sweet feed ration.
Continue to subtract 25 percent of old feed and add 25 of new feed every other day to your horse's ration. This should take you a week.
Watch your horse closely for signs of colic during this feed-changing process, and be sure he is drinking enough water. The most common signs of colic are biting at the abdomen; rolling and standing up successively; and no gut sounds when you listen with a stethoscope.
How to Introduce Sweet Feed to a Horse
Any time you change your horse's feed, you need to do so gradually so that your horse's system has time to adjust. This is due to the bacteria in the horse's hindgut that aid in digestion. If feed is changed too quickly, the new bacteria will not have time to develop and the new feed will be stuck to ferment in the horse's hindgut, which can result in colic. Sweet feed especially needs an adjustment period, as sweet feed contains a lot of energy and your horse may act up when being exercised if he's not used to it. At the same time, many horses like the taste of sweet feed and are willing to eat the new feed.