Cooking apples as a treat?

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Evelynmary

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I give my horse an occasional carrot or apple as a treat. Apples are taken from the family fruit bowl but we have a cooking apple tree in the garden. Currently there are windfalls, later they will be riper but still tart/sour. Does any one give these to their horse? Don't want to give him belly ache. My inclination is not to feed them but OH says 'why not'? I'm only thinking of an occasional one.

Thanks.
 
Not all horses like them as they are a bit sour!
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I live in an orchard of bramley apples (made into cider) and my horse loves them, but my last horse didnt
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Never had any problems feeding them really! Not much different from eating apples, acidity is more or less the same, just the taste is different
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I was watching one of those garden/cookery programs a while back on apples and apparently what is classed as eating/cooking has changed over the years as people have changed the amount of sugar in their diets due to trends/availability.

Not sure about acidity, guess it would depend on the variety?
 
I offered my pony a couple of Bramley windfalls recently & she said Yuk!

In October I gave her a few windfalls a day with no ill effects & she said Yum yum!
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You can eat bramleys (i have) but they are very sour! since you only feed them in autumn really (when they are ripe) I dont think they cause problems.

You can cause problems by giving them too many, as it could cause colic, but then you can cause colic by feeding too many normal eating apples!
 
My horses get all the apples and pears that come off our trees and my Father in laws and anyone else who will donate them. They have a couple each cut up in both feeds all through winter. They are a mix of cookers and eaters. And have never had a problem with them. i never feed treats - only in the feeds so any problems with acid will be neutralised by the feed as they only get Simple systems.
 
Mine used to get bags of cookers/windfalls from my Grandparents neighbours before they moved.

They used to gobble them up.
 
Only on small amounts would I feed cooking apples. One, not too large, a day. Just my preference though as I fear colic which they can cause.
 
Thanks everyone. He'll be getting the odd treat from the garden, not going to save much money but at least OH will be happy!

I once heard a tale of ponies becoming drunk on scoffing too many apples in an orchard. Not sure if it was true, colic seems more likely, whatever not good.
 
My wee Shetland was in a field with apple trees and we saw her careering round the field one day bucking and rearing. She wasn't really a pony for doing such things and we were like wow she can go and have fun.

But then next day she was same then i thought hmmm somethings not right.

Then some one said she is drunk from the apples and sure enough when we removed her from field and she returned to normal
 
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