Do you reduce feed if not working?

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Mabel98

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Just wondering if you reduce hard feed levels when you can't ride? I'm still giving adlib good hay but horse very fresh and holding weight well so have cut feed back until weather improves and i can ride. Do they need extra to keep warm though?
 
I have cut both my boys' mix / cubes down but have kept the fibre intake the same
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In the summer yes winter no,he gets ad lib hay/turnout and 1 feed aday,he dosnt get tizzy and his weight stays at a decent level for this time of yr,so works for him
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(however he only on pony cubes and graze on with beet)
If he was the type to get fizzy on hard feed if not worked i would rethink what i was feeding him though!
 
yes - I have cut out his nuts and he's just having hi-fi and sugarbeet at the mo - all fibre.
 
Yep, all the horses on the yard have their feed reduced if not working - the native types get fat if you don't, and the TB types get really fizzy! One TB whose owner hasn't reduced his feed despite not riding him for a month or two nearly killed me when I was turning him out, he was so desperate to run off and burn some energy.
 
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yes - I have cut out his nuts and he's just having hi-fi and sugarbeet at the mo - all fibre.

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Sorry but I read this as you saying you had cut OFF his nuts
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I'll get my coat
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As a rule of thumb, 'Reduce feed according to condition and work done' BHS/PC got something right then, nice to see because they seem to get such a hammering sometimes.

If I had a stable bound horse in work then I'd cut the hard feed right out and up the hay, depends entirely on the horse and circumstances though.

As it is my horses don't work but are still fed oats and alfa cubes.
 
Most definitely I would cut out hard feed (ie oats etc) if not working.

I always remember a saying "feed for what he's done not for what he will do"
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Absolutely imperative to keep up the fibre but cut out the "hot stuff"
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ETA: LOL
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- that has just reminded me of an old boy whose horse I used to ride (very many years ago
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) who always said ..." always smack him three times, once for what he's done and twice for what he might do" ...so perhaps these old sayings aren't always the best ones to adhere to!
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Definitely cut back the hard feed, but increase the hay/haylage if they will eat more. The digestion of fibre creates warmth and helps keep them warm from the inside.
 
Thanks, i am just giving her chaff and a handful of nuts with a vit/min supplement. She was on Speedibeet but it's too frozen at the mo!
 
Am feeding ad lib hay and hardly any hard food at all despite being able to ride in the afternoons.

Horse did manage to eat a whole bale of hay yesterday. Quite frightening really!!!
 
Mine are in, doing a little bit of work and get nothing but hay to eat, granted they get as much as they want. They are happy, healthy, look shiny and more importantly are sane and well able to cope with their work load.
 
You should defintiely cut high ceral containing hard feed back, as apart from fizziness you can cause metabolic problems such as tying up if you don't. Some horses need a conditioning feed but these should be ok as should be mostly superfibres (beet pulp. soya hulls etc) and oil. Alway increase the forage when you decrease the hard feed, and incidentally it is the forage that keeps them warm, not the hard feed. the term heating can be a little mis=leading, it just means it makes them fizzy.
 
Mines just on haylage, balancer, alfa Oil and Speedibeet at the mo with a handful of Ride and relax, so on pretty much entirely fibre diet. She will get her R+R increased when she starts working again, but at the mo its not necessary!!
 
Daisy doesn't get hard feed anyway. When the school isn't frozen solid she's in work six days a week and regularly out competing. I get some very strange looks when I tell people she's on nothing but a handful of Good Doer chaff and a multi vit.
 
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