Am I feeding my young(ish) horse enough?

B

blood_magik

Well-Known Member
Joined
26 January 2011
Messages
6,343
Location
Scotland
Visit site
Hi all :)

I've had a few comments saying that Beau isn't getting enough feed so was hoping for some outside opinions.

He's an IDx, 6 and currently 17.1 at the withers (17.2-ish at the bum).
He is ridden 5-6 days a week for 45 minutes to an hour. Normal routine is jump twice and school for two or three days. I try to hack him out at least once a week and do hill work as he's rather lacking in muscle at the moment and not fit.

To start with I had him on 0.25 mix, 0.25 pony nuts and 0.5 chaff, which is what he had in his previous home. I added 0.25 of calm and condition.

He is now on:
1 full scoop calm and condition
1.5 chaff
0.25 pony nuts and
0.25 mix
twice a day.
It seems like an awful lot of food :confused: He's also out between 8 and 3 on ok-ish grass and he gets approximately 40kg of haylage (4 large nets).

I was thinking of splitting it into three smaller feeds? :confused:
Help! :o

ETA: he's rather lean and lanky looking. He weighed in at 634kg last week and has put on some condition since this picture was taken 4 weeks ago.
picture.php
 
Last edited:
Personally, I think he looks fine. His ribs are covered and his coat is shiny.
Others (who don't see him everyday) think he's looking too thin.

He has more growing to do, which is why I'm wondering if he's getting enough.
 
Id say you were overdoing it a bit! not necsscarily in what he is getting but the types of food...

You'd be better replacing the c&c, mix and nuts for plain old sugarbeet (unmollassed if he is fizzy) and personally id try feeding alfalfa- its less of a filler and more actual substance, high in protein and energy and good for th digestive tract, if he needs more after that, then re-introduce just the nut OR the mix. Remember you can also feed oil, its very effective for putting on weight without making them fizzy like grain can.

Id also recommend feeding a balancer, eg spillers balancer or just NAF pink powder to make sure he is getting all the vits and minerals he needs to absorb what youre feeding him.

Remember to change feed slowly if you are going to consider changing his diet.

Good luck!

(Source: equine sport science degree, nutrition lectures)
 
I would give him three months off and let him build up condition, but I realise a lot of people want to ride every day.
As long as he is croup high you need to take things very gently as he will be unblanced.
Sorry, I can't make out what you are feeding, as scoops vary a lot from 250 grams to 2 kgs.
I suspect he looks lean because he is still growing and has little development behind.
He need time to grow and mature, I would not be doing much except suff designed to build him up behind.
 
Feed: you can ask a feed rep to come out and weigh him. Or measure him, not with a tape but by calculation.
Then you feed up to 2.5 percent of his weight, no less than 2 per cent.
He is probably 700 kgs so he would need 17.5 to 20kgs per day, not 40gks, which is two small bales of hay.
Buy a weigh scale, they are cheap enough and will save in the long term.
He may make 750-800 kgs so that would be 16 to 20kgs when he has stopped growing, which may be two or more years.
He needs a good sized [stubbs] scoop of feed night and morning to carry his mins and vits, you need to make sure he is getting plenty, I would add some salt as well.
Keep the work within his limits he should be doing very little serious work and jumping over a few cross poles is more than enough. He has along way to go and you need to be patient.
Oh I see you had him weighed [weigh tapes are not much use for him] so I was not too far out, if he is 650kg and lean he should be fed at 2.5% which is 17 kgs per day min. He can easily carry another 25kgs of condition.
 
Last edited:
I think he does look lean and will struggle to muscle up if he's using all his food for energy. Rather than increasing quantities, I'd look to change him onto a conditioning feed. I'd recommend contacting a few feed companies/nutritionists to see what they'd recommend.

If he was mine I'd start by speaking to the Pure Feed Company whose feeds I'm very impressed with.

Good luck :)
 
thanks for the advice.

Im looking to change the chaff to Alfa A, which I believe has more nutrients in it? just waiting on my oldie finishing his bag of chaff so I can put them both on it.

I do have alfa-beet in my feed room so I could try that.
he is quite fizzy - it feels like he could just keep going no matter how long he's been out for.

I would like to stop the nuts and mix seeing as its just bulking out his food and not really adding anything.

one of my full scoops is 1.5kg so that would give him 9kg of hard feed with the new amounts.

miss l toe - he is very unbalanced. we've been taking it slow with him and trying to introduce him to working properly from behind rather than like a giraffe. he's very baby-ish under saddle.
my friend has a similar type and he's only just maturing at 8 years old.
 
Sorry, where did you get 9kgs of hard feed, are you mixed up with kilograms and lbs [pounds] in old money, each kg is the weight of a bag of sugar, no horse would eat that amount of hard feed without risking laminitis.
One standard large stubbs scoop of a mix of feeds including a bit of chaff will do for one feed, but he may need added minerals and vitamins as the recommended amount of bagged ready mix feed will require a horse of his size to eat a huge amount.
All you do is feed plenty of forage and make sure he get minerals and vitamins for his size.
I would swerve alfalfa if he is already fizzy, and no molasses, non at all, so this excludes most chaff and most lickits and most bagged mixes.
Use up the alfa beet, but you need to keep him on a quiet plane of nutrition particularly as he is getting so much.
Calm and condition is not all that calm for all horses, so be careful. The scoop will not weigh the same for all feeds, after all with C&C you have added lots of water, but the recommendations are in dry feed, which is half the volume. Same with Chaff, a lot of chaff weighs very little, and it is used generally to improve digestion/slow down greedy feeders, most chaff is coated in molasses [moglo] so should be avoided.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top