Re: Feeding worries!
I agree with Micki on this one, start off feeding the horse what they are being fed by their previous owner and then make any changes as necessary depending on your horses needs. Every horse is massively different with their feeding requirements based on how well they hold weight through each season, their workload, their energy levels and ability to cope with certain feed types, their age and size. My old TB 16.1hh, approx 590kg pretty much ate me out of house and home, 2 large hard feeds a day consisting of mix, barley, sugar beet and dengie original plus a hoof supplement and a lot of hay through the winter. Coco is an Irish Draft X 16.3hh and approx 630kg and he eats about the same as a 13hh pony! He literally has Dengie lite and a handful of cool mix (anything more used to make him stressy and spooky, now he is a bit older he can cope with more mix but it just makes him fat!) and after speaking to the feed companies dieticians they all said a horse his size should be on quadruple what he is actually on, so I also feed him a broad spectrum supplement to ensure he is getting all his vits and minerals. Coco lives out 24/7 and in the winter has approx 3 - 4 slices of hay a day, when the snow hit last year I was giving him a bale a day (haf in the morning and half at night) as he couldn't get to any of the grass and after 2 weeks I realised how fat he was becoming and slapped myself for being such a softee and put him back on rations!
The only real tip I can give you is keep it simple to start off with, horses have very sensitive digestions and I do think many people over complicate it. Ideally their diet should be fibre/forage based and if you feel you horse needs more energy, weight, vits and minerals or specialist requirements such as supplements then you can look into additional feedstuffs and there is tonnes of advice out there from the feed companies nutritionists, feed merchants and shops, freinds and forums like this. None of us know it all, we just figure it out as we go and a lot of it is down to trial and error!