Feeding a 'fatty', ideas please...

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Ride_2_Live

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As title really,

I have a welsh section a pony who has been out on loan and is coming home this weekend. He is already on the 'round' side, stabled at night with haylage and turned out during day, in light/medium work and fed molichop and pasture mix. When he comes home he will be stabled 24/7 as there is only 2 hour limited turn out at this yard (:(not ideal I know but I had to find somewhere short notice and close to home) and he will be lunged/long reined/loose schooled as often as possible. I am going to cut the haylage to hay and double net it to slow him down, but concerned about what 'feed' to give him. I want to give him something as all the other horses in the barn get fed and it wouldn't be fair at feed times for him not to get anything. Was thinking along the lines of Dengie Hi Fi Good Doer, Allen and Page Fast Fibre, High fibre nuts (in a feed ball) etc obviously with an added balancer or gp vits and mins supplement and some carrots since he will be getting little grass. I know good feeding won't shift the pounds but certainly don't want anymore!

All ideas welcomed, and thanks in advance! :)
 
My fatty gets a handful of Dengie HiFi Lite and the recommended amount of the Spillers Lite Balancer - I give him a balancer because he is currently young and in work and I want him to develop muscle so I want him to have protein. If he was more mature or not in work (or before I started schooling him properly) I woudl just give him a handful of HiFi lite and the recommended amount of a vit and min supplement such a Equivite Original. I just damp it with water.
 
happy hoof or similar (already has general supplement in) and absolutely no pasture mix!!!!!

Wet it with unmollassed sugar beet like speedibeet.
 
Personally I would look at something like Lo Cal balancer with speedibeet, you are giving him all his nutrition needs and the speedibeet can be fed at a reasonable rate before it would start to affect weight so he will think he had eaten a good feed. Use small holed haynets and work out the weight of feed/forage he needs for his correct weight, you can adjust this slightly according to need if he maintains or loses too much weight. I used to tie my haynets from a beam so that they were a bit more tricky to eat from rather than being pushed against the wall to get a good mouthful.
 
I wouldn't give him anything, if he is already fat then he clearly doesn't need it. Horses have evolved over millions of years to get the maximum nutrition from the available grazing (which in the wild could be scarce) so I'm sure he is getting enough from the hay. I used to have a Section D and he was only ever fed properly when he was hunting. The rest of the time he got a handful of Dengie Good Doer to keep him quiet when everyone else was fed - he always looked a picture of health.

If you really want to give him something then maybe some High Fibre Nuts in his snack ball but nothing else.

I don't believe horses have a concept of "getting a good feed" so I really don't think you need to add speedibeet. My IDx is an incredibly good doer (even more so than the Sec D was) so when the rest of the yard are fed, he just gets his handful of nuts and chaff in a bucket (when he is dieting, weight not an issue ATM). He doesn't worry that he is hard done to or wonder what anyone else gets, he simply likes his little bit of tea.
 
I too would not add any feed, and if the hay is good quality then mix it with good clean straw. This is what we do for our fatties and have done for years. If you feel that you absolutely must give him something in a bucket, then a handful of reddigrass would do the job.
 
It is possible to be overweight and malnourished.

If you can I'd soak the hay as well, to remove more calories/sugar.

But I would feed a small amount (100g dry weight or less) of Kwik Beet with a good quality vit/min supplement.

So you reduce the calories but don't malnourish the horse.

True horses have evolved to be very efficient feeders, but they can not magic vits/mins out of thin air and in the UK our forage tends to be low in several minerals; copper, magnesium and zinc (and others) depending on location.

They can 'magic' calories (and vit B) from poor quality forage because the microbes in the caecum (cecum) ferment the fibre producing heat to keep the pony warm, B vitamins and volatile fatty acids which provide the pony with great energy.
 
My fatty just gets a handful of GoodDoer, a supplement and the 'juice' from his skinny fieldmates speedibeet to wet it down. He only gets this so as not to mug said skinny fieldmate for his feed....he does too well on hay and grass alone so definately doesn't need feed!
 
Ride_2_Live said:
As title really,

I have a welsh section a pony who has been out on loan and is coming home this weekend. He is already on the 'round' side, stabled at night with haylage and turned out during day, in light/medium work and fed molichop and pasture mix. When he comes home he will be stabled 24/7 as there is only 2 hour limited turn out at this yard (:(not ideal I know but I had to find somewhere short notice and close to home) and he will be lunged/long reined/loose schooled as often as possible. I am going to cut the haylage to hay and double net it to slow him down, but concerned about what 'feed' to give him. I want to give him something as all the other horses in the barn get fed and it wouldn't be fair at feed times for him not to get anything. Was thinking along the lines of Dengie Hi Fi Good Doer, Allen and Page Fast Fibre, High fibre nuts (in a feed ball) etc obviously with an added balancer or gp vits and mins supplement and some carrots since he will be getting little grass. I know good feeding won't shift the pounds but certainly don't want anymore!

All ideas welcomed, and thanks in advance! :)
Click to expand...

Cut the feed out completely and limit the haylage/Hay. He is a section A after all !
 
MY natives ( a highland and an irish cob ) get hay in small-holed nets overnight, hay in the field ATM during the day and a smidge of Hoof-kind with pink powder to ensure they get vits/mins.

And thats it. Both have excellent hooves, shiny coats are are hairy but not fat.

Plus...magnesium can help to stop fatty deposits developing and guard against Equine metabolic syndrome. Apparantly.
 
My slightly rotund Sec D gets a handful of hi-fi and a handful of pony nuts twice a day to keep him quiet when everything else is fed, he's out all day on reasonable grass and in at night with a soaked haynet - weather permitting, its difficult to soak at the moment as it keeps freezing and he'd end up with a hay popsicle!

He's worked approx 4-5 times a week and is blanket clipped to help burn some flab off and I rug him fairly lightly too.
 
Mine is a Sec A who currently gets (on a vet friend who sees her regularly recommendation);

Ad lib hay (dont want her eating frosty grass)
Handful Hi Fi (will be lo cal when current bag runs out)
Manufacturers rec lo cal balancer

She lives out 24/7 and I feed her twice a day as my others need feeding that frequently and she'd run through fire to get to a bucket given a chance!

She's never had lami but I do watch the grazing and have a 'bare' paddock for summer use.

In the summer she will get the square root of nothing and the bare paddock may become her new best friend - or she will wear a muzzle. Will see how she comes out the winter but I think you cant have a one regime fits all aproach and one regime wont even always fit one forever. I change my feeding based on how they are looking and working and find each year I have to tweak it.
 
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