Feed suggestions for elderly horse with bad teeth

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PoppyG

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My horse is 23 now and her teeth are breaking and she has gaps forming between them. She has them checked regularly - vet says it is due to her age. Unfortunately this week she has a fractured tooth which cant be removed easily, the vet wont operate for various reasons. I need feed suggestions please, she ideally needs a high fibre feed that can be soaked so its easy to chew. Currently feeding her soaked pony nuts, soaked barley rings, a handful of chaff and sugar beet - only been feeding her this for a week since this issue has arised. Thanks in advance
 
Hi, I had an elderly pony who was in his 30's. I used to feed him high fibre cubes soaked/speedi beet/fast fibre/veteran vitality/ basically anything that can be soaked into a mash :)
He used to wolf down buckets of fibre cubes/veteran chaff and speedi beet , until his last year when unfortunately he got ill and totally went off his food. Good luck :)
 
We have a 30 year old who has next to no teeth at all to chew with. He can't even manage a carrot after so many extractions. Everything he eats has to be soaked....like a soup!! He has, soaked grassnuts, soaked bran mash, alfa-a, sugar beet, oil, soaked fibre-plus nuggets and a special veteran weight gaining mash type thing from our local feed store- can't remember what it's called though. He has all hay replaced by wet chaff. He lost an awful lot of weight over summer but now looks as fit as a fiddle and full of himself. He's levelled out at a good weight, he's certainly not fat and seems much happier. We have tried a lot of things, but a mix of all of the above seems to be working well for him.
 
Ive just taken on a retired riding school pony who is in his 30's, he can't eat hay at all and more grass comes out than goes down!! He gets mush to keep him alive!
I use high fibre cubes, grass nuts, fibre beet and Thunderbrooks hay cobs all soaked to a wet crumb (it's a skill to get it right I can tell you, lol)! He gets them all over the course of the day, in varying combinations so he doesn't get bored and at night (last check at 10pm) he gets a big tub trug split into 4 different buckets and in 2 places on the floor around his stable/pen so he has to 'graze'.
So far it's working - he's now not desperate for food like he was when he arrived and he's put some weight on!
It costs me a fortune but when he can be on more grass then hopefully I'll cut the amount down.
He's a lovely chap who is living like a king for what will probably be his last summer (although we hope he'll go on longer as he's keeping my others calm and it's much appreciated!) :)
 
My 25 yr old is on

Spillers senior fibre 1/2scp per feed

Mixed in one bin -
Grassnuts/Equerry condition mash/Purple solutions mash

I soak two scoops into a medium size tub trug and he gets a scoop per feed this lasts 8/10 feeds

Also gets a home made supplement of
Turmeric/Cinnamon/Boswellia 15ml per feed
Chasteberry 15ml per feed
Linseed 150ml per feed.

2x a day, buying a bag of chaff every six weeks and the nuts mixture every 10 weeks

He's looking like this just now on the above and as much hay as he wants.

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My 27 year old dentally challenged mare (vet pulled out another loose tooth this morning!) has Fast Fibre, Veteran Vitality and hi fibre nuts. I make her up a big bucket of sloppy soup from this.

If she needs some extra calories I add Solution Mash to her brekkie and give her a bucket of Hi Fi Senior although not sure how much longer she'll be able to manage this.

There are so many really good soakable feeds on the market now so it's just a case of seeing what your horse enjoys.
 
I went with a mixture of Spillers hi fibre cubes, alfalfa pellets and grass pellets for my old mare (couldn't chew chaff). The high fibre cubes were great because they'd crumble with relatively little water and with little time. Grass nuts/alfalfa pellets take longer to soften.
The one thing I was aware/cautious of is that some easily soakeable feeds (including high fibre cubes and fast fibre, for example) are fortified with minerals, and even though it says "suitable as hay replacement" on the label you can end up over supplementing certain minerals if you start feeding the feed at e.g. 2% or bodyweight. In particular, I'd check how much selenium is in the feed, and tally up the total daily dose the horse is getting. For example, you could feed 5kg of hi fibre cubes before you get the daily minimum RDA for selenium (1mg/day for a 500kg horse at maintenance). Fast Fibre (and Veteran Vitality) on the other hand already contains 1.75mg in just 1kg. Selenium is probably the most important thing to keep an eye on as you can start overdosing at pretty low levels (10x the daily RDA is starting to get critical).
For this reason, I'd probably try to get the bulk of the calories from plain feeds like grass nuts, hay cobs or beet, and add a fortified feed only up to a level that is safe in terms of selenium.
 
I cared for a 40+ toothless pony. She had the equivalent dry weight of hay in soaked hi-fibre cubes, ordinary coarse mix and sugar beet plus grated apple and carrots. All at the usual 75%/25% ratio. She absolutely thrived on it.
 
My 34 year old (dentally challenged obviously, her molars were shedding on a regular basis!!) lived on Equibeet, grass pellets, micronized linseed and a decent vit/mineral supplement. Like a lot of oldies she was cushingoid with IR so important to keep her sugar intake low. She lived on that for about 4 years.
 
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