100% Extruded is the everyday answer for most horses — six complete feeds from foal to retirement. Extruded Textured suits horses that do better on a textured feed, including growing foals and lactating mares. Performance Pellets are the low-NSC pick for metabolic-sensitive horses, plus Growth for young stock. Forage Extender stretches hay, and Care Supplements target one job each, fed alongside the ration.

The bag prints its line right under the Sentinel shield — and each family’s own FAQs live on its tab above. For ration specifics, your vet or equine nutritionist has the final word.

We keep Kent Blue Seal orders flowing constantly, so bags turn over fast — from the mill to our floor to your barn, not months in a warehouse. That steady rotation is also how we handle special orders: if Kent Blue Seal makes a formula we don’t keep on the floor, ask and we’ll add it to an upcoming order — and if you buy it regularly, we’ll start stocking it for you.

Yes — we run our own farm delivery within about 30 minutes of a Hatchet store, free over $300, with weekly to seasonal standing orders. Or order online for same-day pickup in Nassau. Open a farm account →

Horses with PSSM are typically managed on a low-starch, low-sugar diet, and that’s the design brief behind several Sentinel formulas. Kent’s nutrition team points owners to its low-NSC options — Performance LS and Senior on the extruded side, and Carb-Guard, which carries the lowest starch guarantee in the line (5.5% max). PSSM management is individual, so have your vet sign off on the final ration.

This comes up a lot, and Kent’s own nutrition team fields it too — their guidance is that Sentinel Senior’s controlled starch and sugar make it a solid fit for metabolic horses, and that a program that’s keeping the horse well doesn’t need changing. Because Cushing’s and insulin resistance vary in degree and shift over time, this is one to manage with your vet: they’ll tell you if and when a forage-based or lower-starch approach makes sense for your horse.

This is what the extruded nugget was designed for — it breaks down with very little chewing, and it soaks into a soft mash in minutes, which is exactly how Kent’s nutritionists recommend feeding it to horses with poor dentition. For a senior who has also dropped weight, the higher-fat formulas like Performance LS (12% fat) are built to restore condition without leaning on starch. If the chewing trouble is new, a dental check comes first.

Kent builds its senior formulas around four jobs: easy chewing, easy digestion, safe calories and gut support. In practice that means the soft extruded form, starch and sugar kept low, energy drawn from fat and fermentable fiber rather than grain starch, and added digestive support for an aging gut. Sentinel Senior is the retired-horse version; Active Senior keeps the same brief with more working energy.

The rule of thumb Kent’s nutritionists use is to go by the horse, not the birthday. The signals that matter: weight getting harder to hold, slower or messier chewing, or needing more grain to keep condition. Many horses land there in their late teens — but their advice for a twenty-year-old thriving on the current ration is don’t change for change’s sake.

Topline is muscle, and rebuilding it takes quality protein and amino acids as much as calories — which is why Kent makes Topline 30, a 30%-protein balancer designed for exactly this. The feeding chart on every Sentinel bag gives target rates by body weight; work up toward them gradually rather than all at once. If the topline doesn’t come back over a few weeks, that’s a conversation for your vet.

Kent’s guidance breaks it into stages. Through early and mid-gestation, a mare in good condition usually stays on her normal ration. The demands come late: the foal does most of its growing in the final two to three months, so her protein, vitamin and mineral needs climb — the job Topline 30 is designed to fill without excess calories. In the last few weeks before foaling, the recommendation is to transition onto a lactation-and-growth formula such as Safe Start or Mare & Foal, so she’s settled on it when milk production peaks. Keep your vet in the loop through any pregnancy.

Same feeds, smaller math. Sentinel feeding charts scale by body weight, so ponies and minis eat the same formulas at much smaller rates — and the common pitfall is overfeeding, since most are easy keepers. Watch body condition closely and favor the controlled-starch formulas; Simply Lite exists for exactly this animal, delivering full vitamins and minerals at a reduced calorie load.

Slowly — a horse’s hindgut hates surprises. The standard practice, and what Kent recommends, is to blend a new feed in over 10 to 14 days, shifting the ratio a little each day, and to give major hay changes the same respect. Spring grass is the classic trap: short grazing windows at first, stretched out gradually over several weeks.