feed advice

J

jasperconran

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24 June 2010
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Hi all,

I got some great advice on the forum yesterday. my daughters 3 yr old cob is getting a bit, well, hypo shall we say! everyone at the yard thinks its down to the new field the horses are in as a few of them have been a bit 'lively'.

I was advised to purchase some mag oxide instead of molichaff calmer which I have on order but I was just wondering what I can do feed wise, ie, mollassess free diet which was recommended. Currently the horse is on a handful of hi fi original and a handful of spillers horse and pony cube with some garlic.

Any suggestions would be gratefully received, it feels like the horse has been given pro-plus lols.

thanks
 
As your horse is a cob - is he the usual good doer type? He is more likely to need grazing restricted through the summer than need feeding up (or at all, as a type they were bred to be working horses out all day doing stuff on little to no feed). Grass gets high in sugars at this time of year which accounts for some horses going a bit daft on it. I would be looking at creating a track system round your field, or muzzling, or some other way of cutting down how much grass he is getting. A bit of hi-fi is all I would give him IF I needed to, eg to keep him quiet when others are being fed. No cubes or anything else. At 3 he is not going to be physically up to doing any hard work, so all you can do to keep his weight down is restrict what goes in his mouth as you can't exercise it off!

Being overweight causes all sorts of health issues both short and long term, so keeping him slim all his life as far as you can is by far the best thing for him. If he needs filling up at all once you restrict the grass intake then you can give him some hay, soaking for 12 hours will take out most of the goodness in it leaving just the fibrous bulk to fill him up if needs be.

You might need to add in a general multi vitamin type supplement if you are restricting his intake, so something like Benevit in his Hi-Fi would work, or look at a low calorie type balancer like Lo-Cal, LamiLight or Topspec Lite designed for this type of horse.
 
The handful of chaff and nuts won't be making a difference to him as it's not enough and it's low energy. It def sounds like the grass! Can you restrict his grazing? Sounds like he has too much energy and as energy=calories he could also get too fat!
I would restrict his grazing and give him some magnesium in some HIFI lite but tbh the magnesium won't make any difference unless he has a deficiency :)
 
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