feeding golden oldies...

whisp&willow

whisp&willow

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hi everyone...

my sisters old pony is very very old... 40...! and has not kept condition as she normally does on summer grass.

she has lost lots of teeth now, and the ones she has are smooth as a babies behind!! :D

she can eat grass and hay- but not as effectively as last year, and there is a lot of balling going on! so not sure how much is reaching the stomach!

at the moment i am feeding her mollassed sugarbeet, spillers senior conditionin mix for weigh gain (soaked to form a mash, table spoon of salt, and a good old glug of rapeseed oil: split over two feeds a day.

just wondered what anyone else feeds, or would recommend i feed!

many thanks!

vicki. x
 
thanks for your reply! ;)

would that just end up like a bucket of mush? i only ask as i have trouble getting her to eat her full ration of feed over two buckets as it is... i dont think she'd eat another one...

i do want to make sure she has some fibre/roughage going in there though!! :confused:

eta: she is not stabled- out 24/7. ;) with two other horses... and is bottom of the pecking order...
 
Can she stand somewhere on her, so that she has more time to eat her bucket feed ? Why do you feel you need to give so much salt ?
 
i have to take her out of the field to eat her two buckets. she has all the time in the world to eat them. ;) if given the choice she chooses to eat hay rather than a bucket...:rolleyes: she was on her own eating, while i gave the rest a slice of hay to keep them busy, and when i turned round she was in my boot munching hay!

the bag of feed recommends a tablespoon of salt to be added per day.
 
We used to feed my old pony on a soaked mush of high fibre cubes, stud cubes and sugarbeet - he couldn't eat hay due to teeth, but was perfectly happy (well as happy as the miserable old git got!) slurping his porridge. He really improved when we managed to get three meals a day into him in the winter - but as yours eats hay, she's probably not as bad as ours.

Allen and Page old faithful mix is good, think our current old TB will be going back on this in winter - he is currently on fast fibre cubes, again soaked (as they have to be) he seems to do well on that, so will likely get that, old faithful, sugarbeet and some alfa a this winter - although will have to look more into the nutritional value of those to make sure they are good to feed together :)
 
thanks stencilface. ;) like i say she will eat hay- but there is no way of knowing how much goes down, and how well processed it will be! :p

this is the first year that we have had an issue. :( never ever had to feed her at this time of the year. her age is catching up with her now. :(

i was thinking about alpha beet?? but i notice it is un-mollassed, which i would have thought would be important for keeping condition on her?

i find it strange that she wants to eat hay, but wont entertain the bucket unless it is mushy soup! :confused:
 
The grass nuts will form a mush, but you can adjust the quantity of water to find the consistency that she prefers. I would investigate sectioning off a portion of the field with electric fencing so that she can spend part of the day in there with a bucket of hay replacer. Another option is to give a chaff type hay replacer - like a big bucket of grass chaff (Readigrass, Graze-On etc) - she may prefer this to a mash and if her teeth aren't too bad might cope with this, but because it is already chopped may be able to cope with it better than long fibre like hay. Keeping the forage intake up is really crucial to keeping weight on these dentally-compromised oldies.
 
thanks TGM:

you haven't seen our fields.... think highland hillside...! :eek: :p if it comes to sectioning her off then i will need to move her to a friends place and have her partially stabled with hay replacer. if she is out at grass with a bucket of hay replacer i doubt very much that id find her head in it!

i know she wont eat another bucket of feed in a day- as i say, i have trouble getting her to eat the two!! :rolleyes: and she will not eat those if there is chaff in it- its too much like hard work i think.

i was putting in a bit of conditioning fibre, which is very finely chopped, as i wanted to make sure she had some roughage going in, and thought that this would be finely enough chopped that she could manage: but sadly not.

if she wont eat there is very little i can do... lead a horse to water and all that!! :rolleyes:
 
another thing to try is linseed meal , you can get it from charnwood mills and they delivery, do you have or know someone with a chaff cutter, if you blitz the hay then she might eat it better, just a thought
 
My 36 year old had reached the same point as your mare and I very regretfully had to keep him apart from his friends during the day so that he could trickle feed. He didn't actually mind because he can now have the field shelter to himself to snooze :)

He was on a fully soaked diet of high fibre cubes and sugar beet but now has grass nuts, fibergy and Ready Mash added as well. All in all he eats 6kg (dry weight) a day. The Ready Mash is brilliant, he loves it and it is so easy on the tummy.

Oh and he also gets Thunderbrook base mix. Also brilliant.

Well done for getting to 40 what a star :)
 
thanks rebel: ;) we do have a stable building in the field... but we need to get the door and frame sorted before it will be usable - its in the pipeline.

my plan, should she need it, will be to have her in there with some form of hay replacer for a portion of the day. although im yet to see if she will eat chopped chaff type stuff. if she wont then im stuffed as she will not eat a soaked mash all day long. she's had 40 years of freedom at grass.... not sure that i want to change her lifestlye at this stage.

she's had a right good innings, and im very lucky that she has got to this age with very little specialist care- just good hay, rugs and feeding in the winter- same as the younger lot.
 
You might like to have a look at Fibergy in your search for chaffy stuff, I started it after seeing the Veteran Horse Society use it. Mine hates chaff but loves Fibergy (I soak it along with the other feed).

Re the grass nuts I think 1kg of nuts = 2.5kg of fresh grass as it is such good quality grass.
 
I agree that linseed meal from Charnwood is great stuff. Im feeding my oldish pony a cup full a day to help her put fat on for the winter ahead, and it gives their coats a wonderful shine. As long as you're feeding a vitamin supplement to provide her with vitamin E needed to break down the high oil content of the linseed.

Re: feeding her salt. Back in the early 90's at a yard I helped at, we would feed all our horses a spoon full of salt a day with their sugar beet and barley!.

Good luck with your old mare.
 
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