Feeding advise for a poor-doing idiot horse!!

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avthechav

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Mums horse Hattie is an idiot....fact!!! We love her to bits but she is a hot horse, and depite being 17+ (her passport says 17 but this is up for discussion) she just gets over the top sometimes. For the first time in her life she is out for between 12-14 hours a day, she gets breakfast and tea to help her keep weight on and is fed hay when in the stable (during the day due to the flies and pink nose which burns easily).

Mum is coming back from an injury and so Hats is in lighter work than she is used to, and for her she looks great. In fact I would say that bodywise she is about perfect at the moment....and here lies the problem. Hats looks and feels great, we need her to be a bit less 'exhuberant' whilst hacking round the village.

Due to her inability to keep weight on she is being fed what she has always been fed (just in smaller quantities) of 'Build Up' cubes and 'Alpha A Oil'. I was thinking of maybe switching her to 'Calm and Condition' or 'Ride and Relax'. Has anyone got any experiences of which has worked/ and or any other bright ideas?:)
 
One of my TBs doesnt keep weight on too easily. we used to have him on a topspec competition balancer (?) or similar but since he is now in less work we feed him Top spec leisure time balancer with a handful of topchop original; seems to keep him about right. If he has been worked really hard for a change I add some soya oil to his feed that night and morn after (dont know if that does any good but it makes me feel better and he is maintaining a constant weight :P) :)
 
Ad lib hay/haylage, high fibre diet (chaff and hifibre nuts) and corn oil, my tb does really well on this in winter and doesn't fizz them up
C+C is really good also, but I find the above even better!
 
We went to an ror racehorse rehab centre yesterday and their TB's look positively fat and really well muscled.
When I asked what they fed they said fibre nuts, as many as possible. They also live out most of the time and only live in during the worst months of winter.

My TB did very well on fibre nuts and a balancer and then I swapped to fast fibre which he likes but doesn't seem to work as well so I will switch him back :).
 
My arab was very similar - he got silly at the drop of a hat, and would lose weight as soon as look at him!

I found with him was dropping as much sugar from his diet as possible was the key- I fed him on Alfa A oil, speedi beet and copra coolstance meal - the copra coolstance really made a difference over the last winter with keeping his weight on - he was like a different horse!

The other thing I found with Roo was I used a magnesium based calmer - this seemed to take the edge of him a little, and almost seemed to give him a chance to chill out and so "use" the food that I was giving him. Magnesium based calmers are only going to work on a horse that is deficient in magnesium - but maybe something to think about? It helped with Roo, but obviously may not work for everyone :)
 
I use Winergy Equilibrium Condition with my boy, a thoroughbred who drops weight easily and who don't really need much more 'get up and go'. He does very well on it, I just adjust the amount depending on the time of year.
 
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