Diet for TB on box rest (with some walking)

AandK

AandK

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morning all..

finally got the diagnosis from the vet on why Andy is lame. without boring you with the details, he has injured the branch of his suspensory ligament where it joins the fetlock on his right hind, plus he appears to have a weakness in that area. good news is there is no joint pain at all in the fetlock but obviously ligaments take a long time to heal. he is having shockwave therapy and will be box rested for 3 months, with 10 min walking for the first month, 20 min for the 2nd and 30 min for the 3rd month etc..
so, being a TB i want to ensure he has enough food to keep condition on him but without the obvious complications of feeding to much concentrate (he will be on ad-lib hay) - advise please.!!
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also anyone who has had similar experience please share.!

K.x
 
Mine was on box rest for nearly 3 months with a sesamoid injury - on the advice of my vet we stopped her hard feed completely (as she would have been bouncing off the walls as she was very fit !!!) she was on haylage and just a small handfull of alfa -a mixed with a small amount of sugarbeet twice a day.
On top of this I also bought her one of those treat balls to keep her occupied during the day and filled it with hi-fi nuggets.
As I normally have trouble keeping the weight on her, during this time she actually gained quite a bit.
Hope this helps.
 
My 17.1hh 3 year old T.B. mare was on box rest for 6 months. I found D&H Convalescence diet good, that with ad lib hay. Kept weight on nicely w/o winding her up too much.
 
Feed as much high fibre forage as possible - and different types will keep him more interested.
I'd feed hay, maybe buy some High Fibre Haylage (blue wrapper) and give him a section or two a day.
You could also buy 'Graze On' which is purely dried grass, and Alfalfa chaff or different chaffs and give him it in buckets.
Speedibeet is quite good if he needs condition - as it has cellulose for long, slow burn energy for heating/weight - and they like it.
If he gets bored, you could try giving him a treat ball with chopped up carrots, maybe grass nuts or similar in it.
When one of mine had to be box rested post colic surgery, I made her a stable sized electric fenced pen so she could eat grass, see the world, without bursting her wound open or herniating it - that worked really well too.
Hope he recovers
S
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Spillers 'Layoff cubes' are very good - designed for horses on box rest or coming back into work, and have all the necessary vitamins they might not get from just hay. Means you wouldnt need to worry about supplements, but could just feed that (perhaps with chaff and speedibeet, which is what we do to bulk it up without giving them anything exciting) and hay
 
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