Best weight gain plan/products for an older warmblood?

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ecrozier

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Right, the background is that my old girl is now 20. She is still happily in fairly light work, hacks maybe 3 or 4 times a week and might go in the school once a fortnight for about 20 mins with her sharer, who is relatively novice so everything very laid back and on a long rein etc.
She always drops off a bit over winter but usually piles the pounds back on in the spring, she lives out most of the time due to a dust allergy. Plus she stresses when in until the yard closed down for the night, then as soon as first horse out, she wants out.

Anyway, she was gradually putting weight on, until about 1 month ago when YO had to amalgamate two herds of mares so there are now 8 out in her paddock, most of them are fine but the grass just isn't coming through with this dry weather enough for her!
So she started looking a bit poor again. I have popped her up to my parents with my 4 year old for company and they are knee deep in grass that hasn't been grazed for several years, so she can stay there a bit til she's looking healthier but once I move her back will probably have to use hard feed twice a day to help maintain this. Her coat looks nice and she is bright-eyed and bushy-tailed (figuratively speaking!) so I am fairly confident it isn't a health issue. Have spoken to YO and he is splitting the field so we can rotate and has also bought some hay in and we are performing rain dances weekly.

But what solutions have people found the keep any weight gained on? Currently feeding Baileys Topline, Alfa A, just started her on Blue Chip and a splash of oil, she also has a broad spectrum veterans supplement and garlic. If was one of the boys I would pop in during day and haylage but she will come out over/thru door if in alone!

Is equijewel particularly good? Or shall I try Pink Powder to make sure she is digesting all?
 
I had this problem all through winter Em and tried various expensive feeds and the best one by far for both Dora and Faisal was D&H build up cubes/mix,noticed a difference in less than 2 weeks. Have struggled for 2 winters giving endless amounts of A&P C&C with no real improvement on Dora so just decided to give it a go,Faisal has it with his D&H veteran mix and he's gone from this:
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Pic taken early spring:

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Dora

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Spring 2010

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Havn't really got any pics of them looking at their skinniest as i didn't take photos of them looking really rubbish but i should of so you can see the true difference!
 
Hmm thanks Em, maybe could try that instead of the topline cubes....problem is out in that field all the little ones live on thin air as do Ciara and Willow, so its only really scarlett and T who need the weight, and even if we moved just those two into another field they are both nappy nightmares if left alone! Give me geldings anyday ;)
 
bah - i hae the opposite problem with my oldies.. when i had an older tb some years ago, he had baileys number 4 and also have had good results with saracen show improver.
 
ecrozier said:
Hmm thanks Em, maybe could try that instead of the topline cubes....problem is out in that field all the little ones live on thin air as do Ciara and Willow, so its only really scarlett and T who need the weight, and even if we moved just those two into another field they are both nappy nightmares if left alone! Give me geldings anyday ;)
Click to expand...

That's true! Mares eh!

It's ok if yours is a good doer in that enviroment but if it's a skinny it's a little trickier. Could you hand graze her somewhere else each day at the yard? Know it's time consuming but i used to do that when i took Poppy to college and there was no t/o all winter,did seem to help a bit. Another thing i used was the the dried Readigrass with Poppy,just so she had some actual grass going into her everyday,when you feed her you could give her a small meal and then a bucket of that after you've done a few chores or something so i feeds digested a bit?
 
Thanks guys
Mel she used to be a bit of a fattie when she was younger but not these days!
Will try pink powder.
 
Hmm, don't have the time to hand graze tbh with the three of them....but readigrass maybe, there is some grass out there just not quite enough for her I think - will be better once the new fencing arrangement is up!
 
The only way that we have found to keep the weight on our ex-racer is to add a feed balancer to conditioning mix. It is much more effective than increasing the amount of mix he has or numbers of feeds, and it gives him a bit of topline as well.
 
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