can anyone with experience of feeding up emaciated ponies read my thread in breeding.

Slow and steady. Don't be tempted to rush anything. It's usually taken a l-o-n-g time for the pony to lose the weight so you need to be almost as slow putting it back on or you can make the pony very ill. Feed in as many smaller meals a day as you possibly can. Turnout, turnout, turnout onto reasonable grazing if you possibly can, otherwise ad lib good quality haylage. Some ponies will adore Readigrass but many will refuse it and it isn't cheap! Soaked/dry grass nuts may be accepted by some as a good alternative to grass. D&H leisure cubes (or similar) are fine and palatable without being too calorie dense and can form the base for the hard feeds. There's a good Mollichaff product called Mollichaff Condition - it's a palatable, high calorie chaff. My emaciated little rescue lad ate it off and on. Bailey's make a new product called Build and Glow which is almost like a platable, pelletted oil! I can sometimes persuade my lad to eat a spoonful of it. If the pony is AT LEAST a condition score of 2.5 you can feed a little mare and youngstock mix but for a half starved pony it can be too tempting and can be bolted causing colic. My little lad simply adores his feed ball even though it's a dog one! When he was in overnight and I worried that he needed his feed broken down into 2 night feeds (I simply couldn't do it), it was a godsend to put his overnight ration into the feedball and you could hear him rattling it round his stable for hours! D&H specialist feed helpline advised me to sprinkle sugar on my lad's feeds but this felt so utterly wrong to me that (because he'd eat little bits of bread) we compromised on breaking a slice of bread up for him and squeezing Tescos best honey over it. He seemed to like it!

Depending on how emaciated the pony is and how long he's been in that condition, you might find that he has almost forgotten how to eat. You may have to tempt him 24/7. You may find he eats something one day and ignores it others. He may seem to eat only enough to keep a sparrow alive. Don't force him - it WILL come. He may not know that some things like carrot and apple are actually edible (seriously) but I have yet to find a pony that won't have a polo now and then. You may find that it's a battle to put every ounce back on him but remember to take it slowly and you should gradually see him improve. I had to take my little lad to the vets to use their weigh scales because he didn't even register on the first weight (67kg) on the pony side of my D&H weigh tape. I got him weighed then marked it on my weigh tape so I could see any improvement. It's taken 8 weeks for him to go from a condition score 1 to a 2.5 and it's been a battle I can tell you. Some wonderful information off fellow H&H forum members. Have a look at my "anorexic pony" posts. Be aware that emaciation can cause coat problems too for example, my little lad (all 26 inches of him) has grown such a thick, fluffy foal-type coat that he was initially recorded as a yearling. But his tail and teeth tell a different story - he's 3 and a half. His fluffy coat is like the under-layer of a shetland's coat but he doesn't have the top layer so isn't waterproof which is another issue.

I hope this is some help but please do PM me if I can help further and I'd also recommend D&H feedline for specialist help on emaciated horses. Good luck and do please let us know how ponio is doing xxx
 
Is your horse really emaciated or just thin? It makes a huge difference between the two and how you deal with them. Too many people use the word 'emaciated' loosely.

If your horse is emaciated in the true sense of the word I would not accept my vet coming out a few days later - if it is that serious they need to be out the next day at the latest.

If just thin then yes can wait - and with regard to feeding up - take vets advice not anyone else's!
 
pics now added on thread in breeding section...id say is condition score 2 ish..but im not good at it...id say almost emaciated but has been picking at some hay in old home i think..just not anywhere near enough.
 
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