Feeding a laid back horse

I

Isobela

Member
Joined
27 October 2011
Messages
12
Visit site
There's many threads on feeding laid back and lazy horses.. But most of them end up saying that feeding oat could help.

My horse is 12yrs old. 16.2h half blood X oldenburg.
He is feed 2 scoops(0,7km) of oats 3 times a day. So together it makes 4,2kg of oats per day + hay.
We are schooling/flat working 4 days a week, 1 day jumping some gymnastic lines and single stuff and 1 day doing the whole course. Saturdays are off.
He is turned out for 2-3hours a day. And a lot more during holidays, when i dont have school.
We hack a few times a month, and like 3-4times a week in summer holidays.

He is extremely lazy. Or actually in other words he responses to legs and signals really well, but when we get to trotting, he loses the 'speed' and go back to walk, if i don't kick him once in a while. It's similar with cantering. I've had a chance to ride a lot of 'flowing' horses, and then riding mine felt as a punishment. He gets excited over jumping, so no problem there. And while hacking it usually gets a good 100meters to persuade my horse to transfer from canter to trot.

This summer during one week he worked for 2 hours a day. First hour it was someone who couldn't even make him trot (literally) and then straight away a second hour schooling/jumping with me. What I've noticed is that during the second hour he was full of energy ;s and sooo relaxed. And he wouldn't even sweat a bit.

He is a good-doer and he is definitely over weighted, but also very muscled up, as he used to be a driving horse.

And before you kill me for not turning him out. I'd love to, but at my yard there are 30 horses and one field ;s so we have to share..

So basically I want to reduce feeding by one, and just feed mornings and evening and possibly get rid of the oats for something better? I want him to have energy and lose weight.

Any ideas? :)

Sorry for making it so long ;s
 
My first thought is change yards, so that he can have turnout - and plenty of it.
Then if he is overweight, he needs less food and would probably have more energy if he was slimmer. You will not make him more lively by feeding more, you will just make him fatter. It is a myth that different feeds can change your horse's personality or give 'oomph' without weight, extra calories = extra weight.
 
I hate to say it as I also own a lazy good doer but loosing weight is the best option. Feeding Oates will keep him fat. You may be better feeding something like hi fi lite or good doer with a balancer you can still feed Oates if you wanted but maybe just a scoop a day. Each horse is different but this works for mine. Good luck
 
The first thing that stands out is that his diet is really unbalanced just by feeding oats and hay.
I would feed a performance balancer like the one Baileys do with a handful of HiFi morning and night to see if having the right nutrients perks him up, the balancer also has limited calories.

2nd option would be to try a balanced compound feed like Allan and Page power and performance, you would have to ring A&P to get the recommended feeding amounts but it would probably work out a Stubbs scoop morning and night (dry weight).
 
I agree. I thought with Oates you were advised to feed a supplement or balancer too. You may fine he is deficient in something. Allen and page sent me some info about power and performance which sounded ideal for lazy good doers that need a bit of spark. Top spec comprehensive also helped my horse but now on weight control again he is on baileys low cal .
 
The OP is not at the moment keeping her horse in the UK, see her previous threads about livery, It seems that she is planning to move it here. Either way it is in livery somewhere and that is its regime there, I would think she is looking for ideas on what to feed when it gets here, but it may be that she is not going to bring it over after all.

I would recommend something simple that is fibre based like Allen and Page feeds they make different feeds to suit all types of horses and the Power and Performance could well suit a lazy good doer.
 
ah yes, your horse is fat and lazy so the solution is clearly to give it oats to make it move faster, obviously. Same reason all the sprinters at the olympics are obese and eating mars bars, clearly.
 
Theanswer might be to get the horse fitter, actually feed it LESS and work it more with faste,r interval type work. Also to get it in front of her leg.
 
Yeah we are not in the UK at the moment, but we're moving here.

I'm asking you all because at my yard, every single horse is fed Oates + some of them mix. They're all 4 years and up so depending on the age they either eat energy mix or some sort of mix for young horses (never really looked at them because my isn't young ;p). They're all sport horses competing 1,2m and above, kept in all the time. Out once or twice a week in good (dry) weather.

So ppl at my yard gave me one straight forward advice, add some energy mix to his diet. But that would obviously make him fatter.

I thought of feeding a Speedi Beet along with a 1kg of Oates a day? The Speedi Beet has to be soaked, so it would fill up his stomach quicker than dry forage? But the feeding instructions for speedi-beet are 100g of Speedi-Beet (dry weight) for every 100 kg of horse weight e.g. 0.5 kg for a 500-600 kg. Is it per day, or per feeding?

Or 2kg of Hi-Fi lite/good doer morning with 1kg of Oates evenings.

In both cases hay morning and evenings, and turnout daytime. I can't just stop feeding my horse Oates because he had it for over 12 yrs now, so I'll decrease the amount over the time, but in the end i want to get rid off it completely, because as I call it's a 'boring' feed, as it doesn't smell or look nice ;p
 
I actually dont think in a lot of cases that what you feed makes that much difference.

I have a laid back cob which I tried to feed rocket fuel to when we were showing. Naked Oats, Red Cell, Race Horse mix, syringing glucose into her mouth, the lot. Never made a scrap of difference.

And then there is my oldie, completely and absolutely barmy, forward going, wound up etc etc, didn't matter whether he got fed fresh air, or buckets of oats, still nuts.

I will admit to being a bit careful what I give our younger warmblood, but even then I wouldn't say the difference is dramatic.

I agree with the others, being thinner and fitter should give your horse more energy, however it probably wont change his basic character.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top