do you need to feed for muscle?

[Dizzydancer]

I have an ex racer he has been off the track for 2 years, had a season hunting then past pillar to post. i have had him just over a year and he has had some hacking and light schooling last year, the winter pretty much off and been in proper work since may.
We are aiming to do dressage at local level. He is comin on well now still gets very tense- he is rather good condition wise although he only gets grass daily. He is working 6 days out of 7 mix of work.
I am wondering if i need to be feeding him something to help with his muscle gain however he obviously doesn't need anything to give extra energy but i do think maybe he needs something extra than just grass!
We had our first stressage yesterday only an intro but he was good boy he scored a fairly pleasing 63.4 and considering who was judging (Linda vernon) i was very happy! He just needs to work a bit deeper to try and help him relax over his back- i have a clinic with her in October so that should be useful!
Ideas or opinions please?

 

[meesha]

Its my understanding that you need protein for the building blocks of muscle along with correct vitamin and mineral balance. I feed topspec lite which my good doer looks good on but there are loads of different balancers, to give the correct amount of vits and mins you would need to feed a decent quantity of feed.

 

[Theocat]

Feeding protein should help a horse getting the correct exercise to build muscle. There's no feed that grows muscle without exercise, and muscles will grow anyway with exercise! My approach is to make sure the feed he gets has higher protein levels, but I wouldn't feed unnecessary feed, if that makes sense. Alfalfa is relatively high in protein but might add too much energy. If there's no rush I'd be tempted just to focus on the correct work and only start feeding for muscle when you need to start feeding!

 

[Dizzydancer]

Thanks- Im in no rush and once he starts coming in i will start feeding anyway- it is building gradually anyway with working correctly. But i wanted to make sure it wasn't essential that he was having extra protein!

 

[rossiroo]

We have an ex-racer that lacked condition and muscle, we fed calm & condition with healthy tummy and with the correct work he is comming along nicely.

 

[Oscar]

To correctly build muscle you need protein, amino acids, work/exercise and most importantly rest. Muscle is build by working (damaging) the muscle and it 'builds' by repairing - simples!

 

[TarrSteps]

To correctly build muscle you need protein, amino acids, work/exercise and most importantly rest. Muscle is build by working (damaging) the muscle and it 'builds' by repairing - simples!

Exactly - it's the whole package that makes for a good result.

Most horses should get what they need from a good basic diet. However I have seen a few younger horses kept on "barefoot" diets that don't get enough components to develop properly and lack strength because of it. There are easy ways to remedy this - a small measure of oats, supplementing lysine etc - so if you're doing everything else right and it's still not happening, it might be worth a discussion about supplementing the diet, particularly if the horse is doing a fair amount of work.

 

[Dizzydancer]

thanks all it is coming on- have just put a cc in new lounge which shows pictures from may comped to know and i think looking at those i think i can definitly see an improvement!!