bit of a rant

Santa_Claus

Santa_Claus

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www.katiemortimore.com
This winter have struggled keeping weight on one of mine and the last few weeks it has really dropped off again.

Rugged up well and being fed by the bucketload (not too much to overload) and also now on both buildup mix and conditioning additive on top of ad lib good quality hayledge.

We have asked YO to do a worm check but will be surprised if it does come back with something. As am continually assured everything comes back with clean counts by her...

Anyway I am pretty certain of the causes but it is nothing that will be solved without changing yards which I don't really want to do. (field, stable, grazing, lack of shelter being main reasons).

Anyway I have heard second hand that apparently the reason why she is dropping condition is because I am not riding her, well to be honest yes I haven't ridden her as much as I have been as weather awful etc BUT she is predomantly losing fat.

What angers me though is the person that is claiming I don't ride her wouldn't have a clue, I don't see them week to week sometimes so how the hell do they know.

To be honest i do ignore the comments this person makes as they do make several and seem to enjoy doing so (not just about me but about everyone on the yard).

Some friends went yard hunting last week and we can't find anything comparable at moment and to be honest none of us want to move but sometimes we need to remind ourselves the grass isn't greener on the otherside and we need to wind our neck in.

So hmmm yes rant over and any further suggestions for good build up/conditioning mixes for a delicate WB!?
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Why don't you get a worm count done yourself? Then at least you'll know for definite and you don't have to say you've had it done.

Some people just like to have a go just because they like to bitch - ignore her. My sister's horse struggles to keep weight on regardless of exercise and he's a bit of a stress head. How old is your horse? Some of the 16+ mixes are better for condition than some of the conditioning mixes, but that all depends on age! Try redex or some iron supplement, if your ponio will eat his feed with it in
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exactly!!

She was originally on a non barley based hard food as she can get quite err high spirited but with weight loss firstly went back on to a barley based 'pasture' mix and have now gone on to a specific conditioning mix which I have heard good things about before. She is rising 8 so not old and although sensitive we haven't had this much hassle keeping weight on her before but we know the reasons why but they are not going to be easily changed...

And Mandy you wouldn't be far off the truth
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barley supa rings are good for conditon, and they are non heating. could you up your horses feed to 3 times aday? and i deffinatley do a worm count, id never take what somebody else says as gospal where my horses are concerned.
 
Thanks guys actually away at the moment so hopefully there should be a result for wormcount YO supposebly sent to vet other day when I get home. If not I will send it myself for piece of mind but she doesn't look the classic wormy horse.

Have already considered upping to 3 feeds a day but becomes very problematic to do so due to where I work and which field YO has put her in as I would be charged to bring her in, feed her and turn her out as she couldn't be fed in field with other horse and that would probably set me back £4 a day which realistically I just can't afford as would just as well just put her on full livery at that cost and with 2 I can't afford that.

She has only been on the new mix a week (and slowly transferred on to it of course
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) so got to give it time to make an effect. Tempted to stick yet another rug on her though both during day and at night as still convinced stable is majority of problem but she won't be moved...
 
Baileys no.1 is great for weight gain. When I got my boy he was skinny as a rake but also quite forward going so didn't want to 'heat' him up he has that and baileys no.4 with normal hi-fi and a balancer and he is a completely different horse in 2 months and no extra fizz
 
Can I just add, I once looked after 4 horses, 1 was ridden 5 days a week and the other 3 did nothing.
The one that was ridden looked fab, he was round and well covered, the 3 that weren't ridden looked v underweight despite them getting more food!
 
Sorry, absolutely confused.

Why can't you do a worm count? It's your horse after all.

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Anyway I am pretty certain of the causes but it is nothing that will be solved without changing yards which I don't really want to do

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Then surely you won't solve the problem.

But, to be honest. If the horse is warm enough, has as much hay as it can eat, get's fed - and is still loosing weight, you either have a medical problem that needs investigating, something that is very stressy - or conditions that aren't condusive to keeping a horse healthy in - ie your yard.
 
Remember you can not rely on worm counts as they do not detect two types of the worms found in horses (including encysted emerging red worms).

Get your vet in to do a blood test and that will determine if there is anything amiss.
 
There is more to the situation then I can say online, lets just say I'm wary of walls having ears!

me and the owner of the horse (i loan her) are both actively working to one by one eliminate the possible reasons for the loss of her condition. Also she is not completly unfit she is being worked approx 3-4 times a week instead of 5-6 as she would during the summer. She is more than fit enough to go out and do some dressage or low level SJ, she is just not as fit as she normally is during the summer (ODE fit!).

Basic rant is person is saying i'm not riding her at all (along with other things which isn't true).

The weight loss although noticable is not yet at the level to call in a vet (even the person sticking their oar in agrees with that!)

Can assure you she is being closely monitored though and if noticeable improvement is not seen in the next week or two now that she has been on the conditioning feeds long enough and we are trying to eliminate some of the other potential issues which we feel are causes we will obviously look at other routes calling in the vet if necessary.
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I too have a high-strung horse who is difficult to keep weight on. We found that the Bailey's supposedly 'non-heating' condition feeds were in fact rather, er, heating -at least for him. He just got more excitable and burned off all the calories we were shovelling into him. Are you finding she is still quite fizzy/hot on the condition feeds you are using? This could be the problem, even if they claim to be non-heating.

Outshine is OK, though. Maybe try oil-based feed, or just oil, rather than cereal-based ones?

Sounds as though the person criticizing you is just being nasty. Ignore her. Riding a horse doesn't put weight on it - any fool knows that!
 
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