Fat Score opinions please (photos)

PucciNPoni

PucciNPoni

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Anyone care to have a go at fat scoring my mare? She's a 10 yo Welsh Section D, stands 15.1hh and weighs in about 530kg on a tape. She's recovering from acute Lami - she's lost a whopping 7kg since she's been on box rest this last 3 weeks. I really don't want her to look like a rake. I can feel ribs if I press moderately hard.

Anyone?

Thanks
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And back in April, this was us at a show - a point of reference - her weight does not vary that much....

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Thanks for looking
 
She looks absolutely fabulous
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|I adore welsh cobs!!
I think she looks about right now lovely and rounded without being fat it's soooooo difficult to have a lean welshie in my experience.
She looks beautiful.
 
I would say she is a 4 from those pics and the fact that you have to press moderately hard to feel her ribs. You should actually be able to feel ribs easily. The weight definitely needs to be reduced if she has laminitis - what are you feeding her now she is on box rest?
 
I've got to a agree with TGM.

please don't take it as a criticism. both of mine are very good doers so i know just how hard it is to keep the weight off. my 2, connie and a dutch warmblood, have only had a rug on once or twice since the start of may. their rugs will not be going back on until their shoulder pads have disappeared.

good luck with the lami recovery
 
Id say a four.. Id like to see her with a little less weight on. But then I prefer my horses slightly leaner as I know what horrendous issues can arrise from weight. Including laminitis and premature arthritis.
My horse is 16.2hh and weight 530kg...

She needs to loose quite a fair bit of weight if Im honest. She hasnt got to look like a hat rake. But she has got to slim down significatly. The only issue is that now shes had laminitis she with be predisposed to suffering laminitis bouts and irriparable damage to the foot.

Lou x
 
Sorry but I think she is too fat. I have a section b who through running with my youngster and consistently removing her muzzle is now standing in a stable eating soaked hay after getting a touch of laminitis, never mind acute.

I think you do need to get her to lose a lot more weight and if / when she is turned back out either restrict her grazing or get her to wear a muzzle - she will still get plenty of grass through it but it won't let her gorge.

BTW - how on earth do you keep all that stuff piled up behind her?? Mine would have it strewn through the bed!
 
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I can feel ribs if I press moderately hard.




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I haven't looked at the pics yet, because I read this bit first. She is overweight if you have to press. I can see my welsh d's ribs when he runs round his field and I can feel them just by running my hand gently across his side.

You have a real task on your hands, but you are heading in the right direction, so well done!
 
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I think she looks fantastic at this weight,

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Really? I don't want to launch into a huge debate here... but are you joking?

OP, yes, your horse looks gorgeous, has a lovely shiny coat and is obviously very loved and well looked after, but she's too fat and horses that are too fat, to me, don't look fantastic. Sorry.
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Thanks for all your feedback. I'm not offended by the comments of "too fat" - that's why I posted cos it's too easy to be barn blind.
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I've had so many people outwith my own yard tell me that her weight / condition were superb before she got it (two different massage therapists, a saddler and others). My vet felt she was too heavy but doesn't think that her weight was the cause. The lami incidently happened during her season, which is what she thinks was the onset. Before her bout of lami, she was in during the day, out at night, worked 5x a week and competing nearly every weekend.

HOwever, on we go with the weight loss and box rest, ho hum. She's being fed on (and is measured and weighed)

2kg Happy Hoof/day - split in to two feedings and is topped with speedi beet (about a pint in each at the moment). She's at the moment getting Top Spec anti-lam balancer as well in that, but she's being changed to Formula 4 Feet.

7.25kg hay/ day (split in to four nets - each is double bagged to slow down the consumption - and she gets two in the morning at 7 am and two at 7pm which is the best I can do -- only reason I put two in is to slow down the consumption further - doesn't seem to be working though - she's finishing everything within three hours! Help!!!!).

I'm a little stressed that she's finished eating so quickly and is standing with zilch for most of the day. The vet suggested I give her some hay cubes in a treat ball - so I give her a handful to keep her occupied during the day, but not at night. The weight loss is slow going. So I'm worried about how far I need to take it (hence my question here).

Scotsmare - trust me, when she's in a snit she does have a tendency to pull rugs in with her. I found three or four in there this morning. She's in season again, go figure. But most of the time, she's pretty good.

If anyone has a photo of what a Welsh Cob with more of a 2.5 or 3 Fat Score, I would love to see it so I have something to use as a guide.
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Is there a specific reason for feeding Speedibeet - for example to get her to eat medication? Speedibeet is safe for laminitics in terms of the fact that it is low in sugar, but it does contain as many calories as some conditioning feeds (dry weight), so not ideal for a horse that is on a diet, so try and cut it out or at least cut it back to bare minimum.

As for making the forage last longer, you could try switching from Happy Hoof to Hi Fi Lite, as the Hi Fi is much more coarse and less interesting so they tend to take longer to eat it. With your hay, ensure it is well soaked to take out as much as the sugars as possible.
 
As TGM said - I wouldn't be feeding the beet unless I had to - at the end of the day it's all calories that she maybe doesn't need? Unless you're using it to disguise bute or something else I would cut it out and just damp feeds with water.
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Good luck
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Funny you should ask about the speedi beet. I was just giving her the chaff and the balancer on it's own. I called Lami Clinic and they told me to cut back the hay and add the speedi beet, which I am doing. TBH, I don't know *why* exactly they suggest this, but a friend suggested perhaps that it's because the speedi beet maybe takes longer to digest. Meanwhile I switched her to happy hoof cos I think it might have lower sugar than the Hi Fi Light (can't remember now, though, there must have been a reason - she was on it already). And the hay...at the moment I'm kind of stuck with that one. Most of our local hay suppliers are out of hay til the next crop -we ran out of hay as well at my yard and we're begging a neighboring farmer to sell us what he's got. However, the hay has been treated with that anti-mould stuff that when soaked or steamed makes teh hay un-palatable to the horses. That would slow down the consumption a little too much.
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Someone else suggested to me cutting her nets with a bit of straw? Anyone try this? Any comments?
 
The Laminitis Clinic diet advises both speedibeet and Happy Hoof as a standard of their diet - it is the best combination of fibre to keep gut motility and as the fibre takes time to pass through the gut it does not give excessive calories. As the OP said the diet is strictly weighed and measured for the size of the horse concerned and has been arrived at through a process of treatment and management of laminitic horses/ponies passing through there.

OP - do not worry about your horse appearing to eat it all quickly - the high fibre content of the diet means that your horses gut will still be moving and working even though there is nothing being eaten. Stick with and keep weighing and measuring the feed.
 
If you are feeding the Speedibeet for a specific purpose and the whole ration has been adjusted to account for it's calorie content then all's well and good. Has the horse been on this feeding regime since diagnosis? If so, and as there has been little weight loss in that time, might be worth contacting the Laminitis Clinic again and explaining that weight loss has been minimal and would they expect more in the timescale, and if so, should the diet be readjusted.
 
QR

Sorry, have to agree, could do with losing a little more weight yet. Lovely shiny coat there though
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Yes I would say a fat score of 4,I wish we could transfer a bit to my ISH who is a bit light at 750 KG.
Feeding hay and straw is a time honoured practice,particularly with the better doers.Ideally you want good clean Oat straw if you can get it.Second best is spring Barley straw(winter Barley straw is a bit coarser and less palatable).Dont be too concerned if you read that the awns will be injurious to the horse,Modern varieties of Barley and combining methods have made this rather out of date.
Wheat straw comes a poor third place.The important thing
with any option is that it must be clean and free of mould.
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TGM, great minds must think alike. I contacted them yesterday afternoon with the same query. I spoke to the woman initially to also ask about straw, etc. I was given the same information as another poster here, good clean oat straw, free from seeds/hulls etc. can be introduced. My concern was as mentioned before that for an animal that evolved to eat for 16 hours per day, that a horse that eats what minimal ration she has and is only eating for 5 hours - what hope have I to guard against stomach ulcers and bordem/vices? She assured me the speedi beet was as SU mentioned, keepign the gut working even though she's not eating.

Her diet BEFORE the lami was in fact less manufactured. She was grazing for about 10 hours. She'd come in all day and get a handful of chaff (Good Do-er) and balancer and no speedi beet. I would fill a haynet once every 3 days or so, and it'd hang and she'd pick at it now and again. I'd still throw a considerable amount out...so she wasn't eating even that as she would sleep most of the day anyway. Most of her gain would be made up from grazing. She was worked in the school or hacked or competed -- four days in school and one day of competing and another day of hacking. Each schooling session would consist of a 20 min warm up walk/stretch/trot. Schooling would then continue for another 40-60 minutes with trot/canter and lateral work and then finish off with a stretching hack along a lane at the farm. Hacking usually an hour or so (walking hills, trotting and some fast work). Competing at prelim level dressage and some workers. A weekly lesson with my instructor is officially meant to be 45 minutes, but never lasts less than an hour - and it's usually pretty intense.
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When I phoned Lami Clinic and explained that the weight loss has been about 7kg, she wasn't terribly concerned, she felt that as long as there was a positive loss then we were heading in the right direction. I asked her to do the same, fat score the photos. Her response was that in the show photo she was a 4 and that today she is more like 3.5.
 
mike007, I've never used straw as a feedstuff so I appreciate your comments on this. (A wee hint, in my previous horse life in the US, feeding a Morgan horse in show condition consisted of lots of hard feed (think a large scoop or two) of pre-made mixed coarse mix, no chaff and maybe a flake or two of timothy hay, never alfalfa...so coming here, ten years later, things have really changed from what I was used to. Being rather open minded, I try to accept that things aren't always done the way I had done them and I should just fit in. However, initially I "fit in" with a very different crowd than where I am now, so feeding is changing yet again.

Here's a wee piccy of my gelding that I had in the US back in the late 80s
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Incidently, he went out on loan to someone and came back with concussive lami.
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So a question to you - how would you cut the straw with the hay? Would you reduce the hay by half and give the same amount of straw? Would you increase the overall weight of the net?

Thanks!
 
I have a traditional heavy set Welsh D who is 15hh so similar to yours. I have managed to get 20kg off him since April and he now measure 455kg on the weigh tape but he has more to come off yet! My lad lives very well on a bare paddock nibbling the shoots as they come through and 2 year old hay as lib. He has a good sized bare paddock so has to constantly move around it and I ride him up and down the Derbys hills 6 days a week. He is fed a couple of handfuls of hi fi lite to put an all round vit/min supplement into and that is all. I would say your horse needs to loose some more ideally too.
 
I would say a bit porky im trying to be polite here i know how hard it is to make them lose weight iv had a fourteen year battle when my 16.1 cob came out of box rest he weighed 625kg not a rib in sight never has been he know weighs 560kg still no ribs so vet whats him to be 500kg im so glad he said this in a whisper as i think my horse would leave me if he knew i think he gonna look like a neglect case but we will have to wait and see he has got leg problems so would rather see him a little underweight than over i dont think my horse will agree to this though
 
id say score of 4 and too fat, esp for a lami.
if you have to press to find ribs they are overweight
you can see the fat on her bottom and shoulder esp.
but well done getting some weight off already its really hard when they are on box rest due to lami.
i like feeding soaked hay mixed with straw- worked fabby for mine.
 
TBH I wouldn't worry too much about losing weight quickly. When you start to ride her again, that will make all the difference.
I fed my laminitic Speedi-beet for 5 years without any weight gain. Infact over the 5 years I had him he lost 250 kilos ( yes thats right!!!) Lots of hill work and walking out was the best thing for him.
 
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