DIY Santa Mash

Last year, at about this time, I came across a company called Emerald Valley Equine.  The website offered a variety of horse feeds and supplements, but what really caught my eye were the mashes.  They didn't include any bran, and were instead based on one of two products manufactured by British Horse Feeds: Speedi-Beet and Fibre-Beet.  I am a sucker for feeds and supplements and have tried dozens and dozens over the years.  And if I'm going to feed beet pulp, Speedi-Beet is what I now use, because it soaks crazy fast (it's usually ready in 5 minutes!).  But back then, I was still learning about the products, and I wanted to give the mashes a try.  So I ordered several different kinds, including one called Santa Mash.

I tested it out on Donut, who loved it, along with the other kinds I ordered.  The one thing about the mashes, though, was that I couldn't get them locally, so the price of the mash plus shipping was cost-prohibitive for any kind of frequent use.  The mash costs either $6.95 for a single serving (13 oz) or $59.95 for 10 pounds.  And with shipping costs now - I just discovered the small flat rate box through USPS is now $9.20!!! - I was struggling with the economics.

But there aren't many ingredients in the mash, and it occurred to me that I might be able to deconstruct it and make my own.  So that is what I did one evening.  The mash basically has 4 ingredients: Fibre-Beet (beet pulp and alfalfa meal), rolled oats, shredded coconut, and dried cranberries.  (The ingredient list does include a few other things that are probably for flavor: cane molasses, vegetable oil, calcium carbonate, biotin, and peppermint flavor.)

When I deconstructed the mash, I was able to approximate how much of each thing was in the mash.  Here are the weights that I got:

•      Fibre-Beet: 10.16 oz
•      Dried Cranberries: 1.16 oz
•      Shredded Coconut: 0.25 oz
•      Rolled Oats: 1.2 oz

(I know it is just short of 13 oz, so probably I had some measurement errors on my scale.)

I don't have access to Fibre-Beet at my local feed stores, but I can get Speedi-Beet, and I feed it daily to Freya.  So I already have it.  We eat oatmeal occasionally, so rolled oats is easy to have on hand.  And I already feed shredded coconut to Freya every day.  So really, the only out-of-the ordinary thing was dried cranberries.  And it would be fun to add peppermints or candy canes.

The next thing I did was price it out the ingredients.  If I replaced the Fibre-Beet with Speedi-Beet, I could get everything either from local stores or through Amazon.

• Speedi-Beet (44 pound bag): $44.00
• Dried Cranberries (2 pound bag): $18.95
• Shredded Coconut (2 pound bag): $13.99
• Rolled Oats (3 pound bag): $13.99
• Candy Canes (35 individually wrapped): $I have no idea because I forgot to save the receipt, but maybe $5?)

Based on the above amounts, I decided it was worth it to make my own and see how it went.  And then I had a bright idea.  What if I made Santa Mashes for all the horses at the barn for Christmas?  I always want to do something for everyone, and then I run out of time and never do.  But if I got started early, maybe I could manage this.  

So I ordered everything or bought it locally, and this past weekend, Gemma and I made 30 Santa Mashes.  I used 5x8 inch Mylar bags as packaging, and we experimented with how much of each thing should go in the bags.  Despite the fact that the bags appeared to be the exact same size as the ones the Emerald Valley Santa Mash came it, Gemma and I were only able to get about 8 oz per bag.  I suspect that is because we don't have manufacturing equipment to compact and vacuum seal the bags, although we did discover that the Speedi-Beet will settle quite a bit if the bag is shaken, so the amount below is based on some compacting to get everything to fit.

Here are the approximate amounts per bag of the ingredients:

• Speedi-Beet: 5.5 oz (a little under 1 1/2 cups)
• Rolled Oats: 1.4 oz (a little under 1/3 cup)
• Shredded Coconut: 0.5 oz (about 1/8 cup)
• Dried Cranberries: 0.75 oz (about 1/8 cup)
• 1 candy cane

These aren't the right amounts to add, just a picture so you can see what everything looks like.

After adding a gift tag, here is what the finished product looks like:

Note that I didn't heat seal the bag.  My understanding is that it can be done with a flat iron (like for straightening hair), which I have, but I felt like the Ziplock seal was sufficient.

The gift tag is printed using digital paper from Ali Edwards' December Daily 2020 Main Kit, and I added the text in Photoshop.  I was going to cleverly print the instructions for the mash on the reverse of the tag, but that is easier said then done, so to preserve my sanity, I printed the instructions on a different sheet of paper, cut them out, and adhered them to the back of the tag.  Then I punched a hole in the tag and the bag and used a piece of twine to tie everything together.

When I calculated the cost per bag of my version of the Santa Mash, it came out to $1.92 per bag (not including the gift tags and twine).  So that is a huge savings over buying the bags individually, and well worth it if I'm going to make them in bulk.

I think these little mashes would make great stocking stuffers for friends and family with horses (not to mention your own horses would probably love them!).  And they would make fun additions to prizes for shows too!  Plus, you can easily customize the mix to exclude ingredients that aren't the best for your horse or to provide some variety.

Overall, I'm super happy with this particular DIY, and it might be the only one in my history to actually cost less than the thing I was trying to imitate!:)