Feeding advice for heavy cob

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Gerry-Boy

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Hi, need some advice please.
My boy's a heavy cob, not overweight but very much not underweight.
He's got quite dry skin, his hooves are dry as well and he's now pulled his hind leg muscle twice in two weeks - time for mummy to think about substituting his feed.
At the moment he's living on gras (not very much as there are three horses in the paddock and the gras is growing very slowly) and hay.

I was thinking of giving him linseed oil for his dry skin and hooves and add some salt for his muscles.

As he's a heavy cob I don't really want to feed him as such so was thinking of mixing the salt and linseed oil with a little bit of bran and some carrots and other healthy veggies and/or fruit. He'd get fed once a day after I worked with him, wouldn't be much, really only to get the linseed oil and salt into him.

Does that sound sensible? Any better ideas? They have a salt lick and a mineral rock in the paddock but don't seem to use them too much.

Thank you
 
I would use some soaked grass nuts to put the supplements in as you don't need much, mine get a mug.

I would also add a balancer or a mineral and vitamin supplement :)
 
Poor skin/horn quality can also be a sign of lacking minerals. I'd feed a good balancer or vit&min supplement at the recommended rate for his weight, and top up with a bit of micronised linseed (a mugful should be enough) and a tablespoon of salt. If you go for a pelleted balancer, you could add the linseed and salt to that without having to bulk up the feed with anything else. If you want to do some research, I think the Spillers daily balancer is a good starting point (one of the cheapest out there, with comparable levels of vits and mins as the more expensive ones on the market).
Pelleted balancers are usually fed at about 100g/100kg of bodyweight, so for a 600kg cob (I'm guessing here...), that would be only 600g of feed, which is not a lot of extra calories in the grand scheme of things. If you'd rather go with a powdered supplement, a similar amount of grass nuts or alfalfa nuts would make a good carrier to mix the powder into.

It's always good to have a salt lick available, but many horses won't lick enough of it to get in their daily requirement, so a tablespoon of salt in the feed can't hurt and might well be helpful. Mineral licks on the other hand don't work very well. They tend to be 95% salt, and a horse will virtually never get the daily recommended amount of vits&mins from a lick. The problem is that if you made the licks concentrated and tasty enough that they'd really use it, you'd be risking an overdose as you can't control how much of it they eat. So they are mostly just coloured salt licks, with tiny amounts of minerals.
 
I second a balancer. I also have a cob who is not overweight, but like yours is certainly not underweight! She is fed a small amount of Dodson & horrell ultimate balancer, a few fibre nuggets and half a scoop of molasses free chop. Before I put her on the balancer I used to use a Dengie vits & mins supplement which I would also recommend.
 
I swear by fast fibre :) you don't need to feed much at all to get the vits and mins they need, it contains linseed to help with the skin and it's very low in sugar and starch making it good for good doers :) works out a lot cheaper than a balancer too!
 
A balancer will need to be fed at lower quantities than fast fibre, and will also contain stuff like pre and probiotics, which fast fibre won't. If you just want vits and mins it would also probably work out a lot cheaper buying a vit and min powder mixing it in with a bit of feed
 
If he's a heavy cob but an ideal weight at the moment, then how about hi fi molasses free chop, dengie balancer and micronised linseed plus tbsp of salt as mentioned before? Hi fi has nothing in it so excellent for no weight gain but a good mixer for supplements..
 
I have to disagree with this I'm afraid! I still believe my beloved fast fibre is miracle stuff :p contains a pre and pro biotic and my 550kg shire x only needs a scoop of it a day! At £9 a bag it seems to last forever, I've never seen a balanced for less than £25 :/
 
Fast fibre is good..but doesn't contain all minerals and vits in correct quantities for a horse..what works for one doesnt necessarily work for another..mine has ppid and I have to be careful he has ll the right amounts without (personally..) fillers.
 
binbons said:
I have to disagree with this I'm afraid! I still believe my beloved fast fibre is miracle stuff :p contains a pre and pro biotic and my 550kg shire x only needs a scoop of it a day! At £9 a bag it seems to last forever, I've never seen a balanced for less than £25 :/
Click to expand...

my balancer works out at £10 a month.

The ingredients in Fast Fibre are

Composition:
Nutritionally Improved Straw, Oat Feed, Unmolassed Beet Pulp, Linseed Expeller (7.4%), Grass Meal, Di-calcium Phosphate, Expelled Soya Oil, Calcium Carbonate, Mint, Salt, Fenugreek, Yeast, Fructo-oligosaccharides

So basically straw with chemicals, bit of sugar beet and a tiny bit of linseed.

To get a the full amount of vitamins you need to feed between 2.5kgs and 4.5kgs a day of DRY weight. So your one soaked scoop is less than a 1/4 of the recommended amount.

Its a useful feed for some horses clearly, but isnt comparable to a balancer or token feed with powdered supplement.
 
Hi all, thank you so much for your comments.

He is now on Top Spec Senior Light. I also add salt to his daily feed.

We've been doing this for about a month now and what shall I say, he's way less spooky (plus i'm getting better at sitting through them :) ) and he hasn't pulled a muscle since. Plus obviously he's over the moon with getting nice food every day now :)
 
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