100kg to loose - how long should it take?

Gingerwitch

Gingerwitch

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If your horse was 100kg overweight - how long would you take to move the weight off him or her? Horse is a big id heavyweight - and yep it is overweight boarding on obese but its mainly on the animals belly .

I was aghast to hear someone say she would have it of the pony in a week - week and a half maximum.

Is it me - or do I think a 10 to 15% weight reduction should take a good month to 6 weeks with a combination of excercise, restricted turn out and soaked hay and good straw.
 
I took on an obese 14.2 pony last June. He was over 600kg and had laminitis so was on box rest for 2 months. He is now 430kg so it has taken this length of time to get him right. Very restricted grazing, ad lib soaked hay and plenty of walk excercise and we have now started a bit of trot work. I'm lucky that there are loads of hills round here. You CAN do it. Good Luck!
 
A long time. My horse has lost near enough 200kg but it's taken about 2 1/2-3 years. We've had periods of him plateauing and just maintaining. He's currently muzzled 24/7 on restricted turnout (getting a small feed for supps) and worked most days and still puts on weight if he's not worked :(
 
To lose that amount of weight in a very short time is hazardous to the horse's health as it can cause serious liver problems as the fat is broken down to use for energy. As a rough rule of thumb, it will take as long to carefully lose it as it did to put it on in the first place. It's a lot easier to get weight of a horse without the horse feeling hungry and miserable all the time in winter. My horse needed to lose at least 50kg, ideally 75kg or more. At no point during the winter was he hungry, cold or left to shiver the weight off unrugged in awful weather. He was just fed ad lib haylage when in, and twice daily a mix of 2 chaff feeds, half scoop of Veteran Chaff, scoop of Hi Fi Lite, wet Speedibeet to dampen it. Mugful of Baileys Lo-Cal. No cereals at all. So full tummy but light on calories. At our yard, horses are in for 5 hours during the day, out the rest of the time, summer and winter. Sunny weighed a horrifying 595KG (26 yr old 15.3 cob) but by the end of the winter he had dropped to a whisper under 500 kg. So that's a weight loss of almost 100kg over 7 months. And going into the spring a little light meant there were no worries over lami. He's a comfortable 530kg at the moment but I know he'll lose the weight over winter, as nature intended.
 
I think weight loss should be slow and steady to avoid problems Box_of_Frogs has highlighted and also to loose weight very fast means starving which as well as physical upset causes emotional and behavioural distress imo.

I am dieting a cob atm and she is totally off grass and on a diet of soaked hay with vits and minerals plus salt given in a small amount of unmollassed beet three times a week. She has lost a good amount of weight (not sure how much in Kgs) and I'm now increasing her exercise. We've started with in hand walks and some low level loose work nothing too fast or strenuous.

Weight loss imo needs a low calorie, high fibre diet and exercise. I do think doing fast work with an overweight horse without building up gradually is unwise myself. That's a personal opinion, more strain on circulation and breathing carrying the extra weight.
 
OMG GW - in a week!!! What was she going to do? Cut the fat off by hand? :D

Anyway, I agree with what everyone else said. Do hope that person is telling tales. I've just got 40kgs off my fatty and that has taken all of May nearly with part-time muzzling and plenty of ridden work.
 
Gingerwitch said:
If your horse was 100kg overweight - how long would you take to move the weight off him or her? Horse is a big id heavyweight - and yep it is overweight boarding on obese but its mainly on the animals belly .

I was aghast to hear someone say she would have it of the pony in a week - week and a half maximum.

Is it me - or do I think a 10 to 15% weight reduction should take a good month to 6 weeks with a combination of excercise, restricted turn out and soaked hay and good straw.
Click to expand...

She is clearly delusional.
 
Mines now in her third week of in at night with a small haynet (small holes too) and U can see that she has lost some weight. I'm doing this over winter too as the grass does not have as much kick in it as it does in the summer.
 
it took me a good 6-8 weeks to put this kind of wait ON my elderly boy so any less than that would be bad. personally i would aim for 3kg a week so 34 weeks, over half a year!
 
Gingerwitch said:
I was aghast to hear someone say she would have it of the pony in a week - week and a half maximum.
Click to expand...

If she can do that with a pony why isn't she making fitness videos/diet plans for humans? If what she says is possible she could make a fortune on the human front :p:p
 
She could do it alright but it would be extremely detrimental to the horses health and she would essentially be shocking his system and tucking him up so not true weight loss....more like the weightloss a human gets after food poisoning and they have been vomiting/diarrhoea! The horses fitness level will have an effect on how quickly he shifts the weight but certainly 4-6 weeks would be nice timing.
 
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